All the Pretty Horses

Texas, 1949. After the death of his grandfather and the sale of the family ranch, sixteen-year-old John Grady Cole rides south with his friend Lacey Rawlins in search of a country where horses and horsemanship still seem to offer a complete way of life. Their journey into Mexico is complicated by the volatile Jimmy Blevins, but John Grady’s skill with horses eventually wins him work on a great hacienda and brings him into a forbidden relationship with the owner’s daughter, Alejandra.

The promise of freedom gives way to betrayal, imprisonment and violence as John Grady discovers that courage and technical mastery cannot protect him from class, family authority or the consequences of desire. Set in the first years after the Second World War, the novel is a coming-of-age story and an elegy for ranching traditions already being displaced by property sales, roads and a more regulated border.