Reading Order
The Crossing Reading Order
The Crossing (1994) by Cormac McCarthy is the second volume of the Border Trilogy and the most meditative of his major novels — the story of Billy Parham, a 16-year-old New Mexico boy who makes three separate journeys into Mexico in the years before and during World War II. The first journey, to release a pregnant wolf he has trapped back into the mountains of Mexico, is the novel's most celebrated sequence and one of the great set pieces in American fiction. The second and third journeys follow loss and searching in the aftermath of violence. The Crossing is the darkest of the Border Trilogy books — where All the Pretty Horses is romantic and elegiac, The Crossing is meditative and almost philosophical, punctuated by long conversations with strangers who tell Billy stories that open onto wider questions about fate, violence, God, and the nature of the world. These embedded stories-within-stories are McCarthy's most formally unusual device: travelers, priests, and old men stop Billy and offer him long, digressive narratives about their own experiences, in a mode that is almost magical realist in its quality. The Crossing is the Border Trilogy volume that most rewards re-reading.
Where to start
The Crossing — any Vintage International paperback. The second Border Trilogy volume but can be read as a standalone. The wolf sequence in the first part is the entry point; readers who respond to that sequence will respond to the rest of the novel's meditative mode.
Complete The Crossing Book List
- 1Buy
The Crossing
Cormac McCarthy·1994·The novel — Billy Parham's three journeys into Mexico, the wolf, the loss, the searching; McCarthy's most meditative and formally unusual major novel; the Border Trilogy's philosophical heart. - 2Buy
All the Pretty Horses
Cormac McCarthy·1992·The Border Trilogy's first volume — the romantic companion; John Grady Cole's Mexico is the elegant, romantic version of the border that Billy Parham navigates in a more meditative and loss-saturated register. - 3Buy
Cities of the Plain
Cormac McCarthy·1998·The Border Trilogy's conclusion — John Grady Cole and Billy Parham together; the convergence of the trilogy's two protagonists and the elegiac ending of McCarthy's examination of the dying West. - 4Buy
Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy·1985·McCarthy's masterpiece — the essential companion in his meditation on the border and Mexico; the Judge's historical violence is what Billy's Mexico carries the echo of, and the philosophical weight of the conversations Billy has are the accessible version of the Judge's speeches. - 5Buy
No Country for Old Men
Cormac McCarthy·2005·McCarthy's most accessible major novel — the companion in his philosophical meditation on what cannot be stopped; Bell's inability to face what the world has become is the older-man version of what Billy learns in his Mexican journeys. - 6Buy
Pedro Páramo
Juan Rulfo·1955·Rulfo's Mexican masterpiece — the most important companion in Mexican literature; the dead who speak in Comala are the Mexican literary version of the embedded stories that Billy hears in The Crossing, and Rulfo's influence on McCarthy's border prose is direct. - 7Buy
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Gabriel García Márquez·1967·García Márquez's masterpiece — the companion in Latin American fiction; the magical-realist quality of the stories embedded in The Crossing (old men and priests who tell Billy stories that seem to open onto other worlds) is McCarthy's engagement with the Latin American tradition he encountered through his border setting. - 8Buy
The Old Man and the Sea
Ernest Hemingway·1952·Hemingway's novella — the companion in the American tradition of the man-and-animal relationship; Santiago's relationship with the marlin is the Hemingway version of what Billy's relationship with the wolf represents — a man's encounter with something wild that exceeds his capacity to possess or control it.
The Crossing — Frequently Asked Questions
What is The Crossing about?
The Crossing follows Billy Parham, a 16-year-old boy living with his family on a ranch in the Hidalgo County, New Mexico mountains. The novel is in three parts: In the first, Billy traps a pregnant wolf who has been raiding the ranchers' cattle and decides, instead of killing her, to carry her back into the mountains of Mexico where she came from — a journey that takes him deep into Mexico and ends in loss. In the second, Billy returns to New Mexico to find his family has been murdered and their horses stolen; he and his younger brother Boyd go back into Mexico to find the horses, and Boyd is shot and meets a Mexican girl and stays behind. In the third, Billy goes back into Mexico after the war to find Boyd, who has died and become a kind of folk hero to the local people.
What is the significance of the wolf in the first part?
Billy's decision to carry the wolf back into the mountains of Mexico, rather than kill her for the bounty, is the novel's central moral act and its most celebrated sequence. The wolf is pregnant, and Billy's choice to return her to the wild is not strategic (it earns him nothing) but expressive of something in his character — a refusal to accept the logic of pure instrumentalism that the ranching world expects. The wolf is confiscated in Mexico by soldiers and put in a fighting pit, and Billy's attempts to recover her and give her a dignified death become a kind of ceremony of what he owes to what is wild and free. The wolf sequence is one of the great set pieces in American fiction and establishes the tone of loss and the impossibility of honoring what you love that runs through the rest of the novel.
Why does The Crossing contain so many embedded stories?
The Crossing's most formally unusual feature is a series of long conversations in which strangers — a priest, a traveler, an old man — stop Billy and tell him stories that open onto wider philosophical questions: about fate, about God, about the nature of the world, about what human beings can know. These stories are not plot-relevant in the conventional sense; they are meditations that Billy is exposed to at moments of crisis or uncertainty. McCarthy seems to be suggesting that the oral storytelling tradition of rural Mexico — the embedded story, the parable — is the appropriate formal response to the kind of events Billy is living through: events that cannot be processed by rational analysis but can be illuminated by a stranger's digressive wisdom. The embedded stories give The Crossing a quality that is unlike any other McCarthy novel.
How does The Crossing compare to All the Pretty Horses?
All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing are both Border Trilogy novels about a teenager who crosses into Mexico and encounters love, violence, and loss — but they are very different novels. All the Pretty Horses is romantic: John Grady Cole is a man of real excellence (with horses, with Alejandra) who has a genuine love affair and suffers a genuine loss that is also a romantic one. The Crossing is meditative and loss-saturated from the beginning: Billy's Mexico is not a place of romance but of grief, and the novel is about what he loses — the wolf, Boyd, something essential about what he believed the world to be. All the Pretty Horses is the easier read; The Crossing is the deeper one.
What should I read after The Crossing?
After The Crossing, Cities of the Plain (1998) completes the Border Trilogy, bringing John Grady Cole and Billy Parham together. All the Pretty Horses is the romantic companion. Blood Meridian is the essential companion in McCarthy's meditation on Mexico and the border. For Latin American fiction that influenced The Crossing's embedded-story structure, Juan Rulfo's Pedro Páramo is the most important companion. Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude is the companion in magical-realist Latin American fiction.
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