"All the Pretty Horses" by Cormac McCarthy.

All the Pretty Horses begins with the 1949 funeral of John Grady Cole's grandfather. With his death, John Grady's mother will sell their Texas ranch and move away. There is nothing left in Texas for John Grady, who loves the ranch and idealizes the cowboy's way of life. Only sixteen years old, John Grady runs away from home with his friend Rawlins. On horseback, they head toward the Mexican border, leading the idyllic, storybook life of migrant cowboys. They are joined by a younger boy, the sensitive and stubborn Jimmy Blevins. Together, the three cross over the Rio Grande into Mexico.

All the Pretty Horses begins with the 1949 funeral of John Grady Cole's grandfather. With his death, John Grady's mother will sell their Texas ranch and move away. There is nothing left in Texas for John Grady, who loves the ranch and idealizes the cowboy's way of life. Only sixteen years old, John Grady runs away from home with his friend Rawlins.

[Portrait of Wesley Prince, Nat King Cole, and Osc...

[Portrait of Oscar Moore, Nat King Cole, and Wesle...

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On horseback, they head toward the Mexican border, leading the idyllic, storybook life of migrant cowboys. They are joined by a younger boy, the sensitive and stubborn Jimmy Blevins. Together, the three cross over the Rio Grande into Mexico.

The first American colonials, the Puritans, envisioned the vast unexplored reaches of land to the west of the colonies as a "desert wilderness," where danger lurked most obviously in the form of hostile Native Americans. At the same time, however, the Puritans also thought of the American continent as somehow sacred, a new promised land. As white Americans began to explore westward, these two attitudes remained at the forefront of the American imagination. Ideas of the American West have become an important part of our literature and mythology; they are pervasive in the American mind. For as long...