Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy

Reviewing ‘All the Pretty Horses,’ ‘The Crossing,’ and ‘Cities of the Plain’

A man holds a gun to my head. “Summarize Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy in a single sentence,” he says.

I jolt. “You want me to,” I say, voice cracking, “distill more than a thousand pages, stretching across three novels into a solitary sentence?”

He answers, nonverbally. I hear the clack of his cocked hammer next to my ear, fully aware no edition of t…