The Crossing (The Border Trilogy, Book 2) (Vintage International) Paperback – March 14, 1995

This is the second volume of Cormac McCarthy's aptly named "Border Trilogy." After a reading of the first, All the Pretty Horses (The Border Trilogy, Book 1), I knew I would complete the trilogy. Among other reasons, the novels are "set in my backyard," if one takes an expansive view of same: the border being the one between the United States and Mexico. In the first volume, American adolescents from Texas crossed into Mexico to "find their way in the world." In this volume, "the crossing" of the adolescent (a different one, different time period) is from New Mexico into Mexico, and the purpose is a bit different.It is the late `30's, what would be the waning days of the Great Depression, and Billy Parham, 16, and his brother Boyd, 14, are growing up on a "hard-scrabble" ranch in Hidalgo County, NM, in the area normally referred to as "the boot heel" of New Mexico. It is an area still so remote that probably less than one New Mexican in a 1,000 has visited it; I've been there only once, driving to Columbus, yet still missing the portion McCarthy so lyrically describes: the Animas Mountains and valley. This book encouraged me to make amends for this oversight.The two boys meet a hungry Indian, and obtain food for him, an event which foreshadows developments in an unlikely way. Over the past decade there have been efforts to re-introduce wolfs into the wild of NM (with considerable opposition), so it was ironic to read of the time that they had been hunted to extinction in NM, since they are no friend to the cattle ranchers. Nonetheless, in McCarthy's account, there is a wolf that has come up from the mountains of Mexico, and is killing cattle. The two boys, and their dad set out to trap it, and McCarthy demonstrates considerable narrative skills depicting the process whereby even a "clever" wolf is trapped. The author never veers to a "New Age" outlook on the interactions between man and wild animals, but he does describe the action with considerable empathy for the wolf, as well as the understandable reaction of Billy when the wolf is trapped: he will not kill the wolf, rather he will take it back to the mountains of Mexico, and release it. There was no border fence in the `30's, so Billy simply takes his horse, and now "his" wolf across. For anyone, but particularly for a 16 year old American boy, it is an adventure, requiring an essential ability to "think on your feet" in a new environment. McCarthy "style" involves long descriptive passages on the landscape, with numerous technical terms, particularly those involving the skills of horse-handling. And his narrative also involves interspersing passages of Spanish in the dialogue, a language Billy speaks, thanks to his maternal grandmother. Other reviewers who only speak English have complained of this. Although passages in French are more common in narratives of English, and I can read French, the Spanish was a bit more of a challenge, and did require a Spanish dictionary in the lap while reading: hopefully I'm a bit wiser for the process.Billy Parham's initial purpose, taking the wolf back to Mexico ends on page 125. There are more than 300 pages to go. Billy is joined by his brother Boyd, in both purposeful, and then seemingly random wanders in northern Mexico. The "kindness of strangers" is very much in evidence, as they both are often penniless. And the occasional terrifying violence that mars the peace of both countries is also in evidence. Through flashbacks, the revolution(s) in Mexico, which manage to kill off so much of the "best and brightest" usually of the male population, is also depicted. Billy stumbles into a church and finds an old woman praying. McCarthy brilliantly captures one slice of Mexican history and society with the following:"He knew her well enough, this old woman of Mexico, her sons long dead in that blood and violence which her prayers and her prostrations seemed powerless to appease. Her frail form was a constant in that land, her silent anguishing. Beyond the church walls the night harbored a millennial dread panoplied in feathers and the scales of royal fish and if it yet fed upon the children still who could say what worse wastes of war and torment and despair the old woman's constancy might not have stayed, what direr histories yet against which could be counted at least nothing more than her small figure bent and mumbling, her crone's hands clutching her beads of fruitseed. Unmoving, austere, implacable. Before just such a God."The Crossing? Billy crosses the American-Mexican border at least five times, yet the title is in the singular. I suspect it refers to that much tougher crossing he made, from adolescence into manhood. I welcome comments. 5-stars for an essential American novel.

I always find McCarthy books very difficult to review for some reason, even though each one has been powerful in their own way and a thoughtful experience. I’ve enjoyed every Cormac McCarthy book I’ve read (The Crossing being my fourth read) and feel like there are some signature McCarthy staples that a reader experiences when venturing forth into one of his novels.The novel here is aptly named because in The Crossing we have a focus on various journeys of sorts, both literal and figurative, that are experienced namely by our protagonist, Billy Parham. Within the novel, there are a total of three literal crossings, one of which is Billy’s journey into Mexico after capturing a she-wolf that was terrorizing the father’s livestock. Along this path, Billy encounters allies, foes, dangers, and insights into the land.One of the most notable qualities of McCarthy (alongside the lack of quotations for dialogue) is his stream of conscious dreamlike prose that seems to go in line with the mythical effect of the plot. I felt like I could literally get lost in the prose (I mean, in an effective way). And this adds to the literary experience, as in The Crossing themes such as coming of age, loss of innocence, facing the harsh realities of life. There is a constant prevailing commentary on the human existence that is focus.This novel has less a linear styled plot but works instead more so as a series of connected episodes or parts that take us to one larger conclusion. Another notable aspect is McCarthy’s distinct ability to use the oral tradition of storytelling as part of both the literal and symbolic journey. In this way, we are given a story within a story, and I think this adds to the mythical, ponderous quality that The Crossing establishes.This was yet another powerful reading experience from McCarthy, and I look forward to finishing with the last in the Border trilogy, Cities of the Plain.

Reading this book is like having a holy vision: I feel as if I should tell the world about it, but at the same time it seems so sacred and personal that maybe I should just keep it to myself and try to figure out why it came to me, into my life, into my head.The book is the story of Billy Parham, a son in a late-1930s New Mexican ranching family. Billy traps a wolf that has been killing his father's cattle but realizes he can't kill it and has to return it to its home in the mountains of old Mexico. Billy crosses the border into Mexico, and as he does he crosses from real life into a world of dreams, where everyone moves as if the air was liquid, where every ruin has an irretrievable story, where soot and heat and danger hang in the air, and where nothing ever goes as planned.The story is not as streamlined or as focused as its thematic predecessor, "All the Pretty Horses," but that's not necessarily a shortcoming. The book sprawls out like a wide hot desert--curling north and south, east and west, across the present and into the past. The writing is as good as any writing I've ever read ever, and certain metaphors and feelings will stay with you for years. For example: the coals of a campfire seeming like an exposed piece of the core of the earth.This is a book that needs to be read. Pick it up, and let it seep into your skin, let it open you to other worlds and peoples and ideas, and let it change you. Let it open your eyes to the world, and to the West, and the goodness and the hope and the sadness that haunts the lives of all of us.This is a book made of all those ineffable things that most of us just can't put into words. But here, somehow, Cormac McCarthy has managed to do just that. Here is the intangible, but tangible. Here is the unnameable, but named. Here are the thoughts you could never express, expressed.