Butcher's Crossing

Butcher's Crossing is a western novel by John Williams, originally published in 1960. The story follows William Andrews, a young Harvard student who leaves his life behind to explore the American West. The book begins and ends in the fictional frontier town of Butcher's Crossing, Kansas, in the early 1870s, where Andrews joins a buffalo-hunting expedition. He and the people he meets along the way must confront and survive the brutal realities of nature in their attempts to get buffalo hides to sell. Along the way, Andrews contemplates his purpose in life with respect to nature, specifically through the influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson.