The Crossing

The Crossing is a novel by American author Cormac McCarthy, published in 1994 by Alfred A. Knopf. The book is the second installment of McCarthy's "Border Trilogy," following the award-winning All the Pretty Horses (1992), to which The Crossing has been both favorably and unfavorably compared. Plot introduction No characters from All the Pretty Horses reappear, but like its predecessor, The Crossing is a coming-of-age novel set on the border between the southwest United States and Mexico. The plot takes place before and during the Second World War and focuses on the life of the protagonist Billy Parham, a teenage cowboy; his family; and his younger brother Boyd. The story tells of three journeys taken from New Mexico to Mexico. It is noted for being more melancholic than the first book of the trilogy, without returning to the hellish bleakness of McCarthy's early novels. Most of the protagonists are people of few words; thus the dialogues are few and concise. Additionally, since much of the interaction is with Mexican people, many parts of dialogues are written in untranslated Spanish. Although the novel is not overtly satirical or humorous, it has many of the qualities of a picaresque: a realistic portrayal of a destitute hero embarking on a series of loosely connected, arguably doomed quests. In a critical review, The Independent described the book as "an ungainly picaresque" that "never becomes more than a sequence of events."