Cormac McCarthy’s The Crossing is a 1994 coming-of-age Western that explores humanity’s relationship with the frontier through teenager Billy Parham’s journeys during the early 1940s. The novel is the second installment of McCarthy’s “Border Trilogy,” which includes All the Pretty Horses (1992) and Cities on the Plain (1998), although the plot of The Crossing has no connection to the first installment of the trilogy. McCarthy is a Pulitzer Prize winner for The Road (2006) and a Macarthur Fellow and is widely considered one of the greatest American novelists. This guide references the first Vintage International paperback edition of the novel.

Punctuation Note: McCarthy omits nearly all punctuation from his prose except for what he considers necessary. Direct quotations in this guide preserve McCarthy’s omission of apostrophes and other punctuation.

Content Warning: The source text uses offensive terms for Indigenous Americans and Indigenous Mexicans as well as the derogatory term “gypsy” to refer to nomadic peoples. This guide uses updated and accurate terminology, but preserves the original diction of the source text in direct quotes.

Plot Summary

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the Parham family lives on their ranch in the Animas Valley of Hidalgo, New Mexico. Billy, 16, and his 14-year-old brother Boyd encounter an Indigenous man who demands food. When they boys bring him the food that night, the man asks questions about their home in a threatening manner. The next day their father tells them there’s a wolf on their land, despite wolves being hunted to extinction in the valley years before.

The boys and their father gather wolf traps from the cabin of an old hunter who disappeared. Billy earns his father’s confidence and is allowed to set traps alone, while Boyd is excluded from the endeavor after he destroys his saddle trying to catch a cow that ended up in one of the traps. The wolf outsmarts them repeatedly, and Billy goes to visit another old hunter, Don Arnulfo, who tells him that catching a wolf is the same as losing it. When Billy sets a trap in the remains of a vaqueros’ campfire, Billy’s father is furious; he is sure the vaqueros can’t read the note Billy left. Billy goes to disarm the trap and finds the wolf ensnared.

Seeing the wolf is pregnant, Billy decides to return the wolf to its home in the mountains of Mexico. He ties and muzzles the wolf and rides south, meeting several bemused Americans who help him with his journey. Billy crosses into Mexico, and he and the wolf form a wary trust. When Billy helps the injured wolf ford a river, he is met on the riverbank by local authorities who confiscate the wolf.

Billy follows the wolf to a hacienda where it is put in a dogfighting ring. After the wolf fights off several dogs, Billy enters the ring and unchains it. The son of the hacendado (the owner of the hacienda) confronts Billy, who has no legal right to be in Mexico, and says that bringing a wolf there puts Mexicans in danger. Billy un-collars the wolf, but it does not fight or run. At gunpoint, Billy puts the collar back on the wolf and leaves. Outside, Billy sees the last two vicious dogs that will fight the wolf. He returns to the ring and shoots the wolf dead. He trades his rifle for the wolf’s body and carries it into the mountains to bury it.

In Part 2, Billy wanders the Mexican countryside for several weeks until he meets the caretaker of a collapsing church. The caretaker tells Billy about a heretic who lived under the unstable dome of a ruined church, daring God to kill him. The heretic debated with the caretaker, but later fell ill; when the caretaker tried to give him last rites, the heretic told him to save himself. The man urges Billy to return home, and he promises he will.

Billy makes a long journey only to find his home abandoned, the horses stolen, and his parents murdered by thieves who are implied to be connected to the Indigenous man from Part 1. Billy and Boyd, who has been living as an orphan, gather supplies and ride to Mexico as outlaws to find their horses.

They wander for a week before spotting one of their horses. Billy confronts the owner, who surrenders the horse when he hears their story and tells him where he bought it. In Casas Grandes, Billy and Boyd meet with a man named Gillian who purchased their horse at auction from La Babícora ranch. Gillian warns them that the ranch owner, Hearst, is dangerous. On their journey, they encounter a young woman who is being held captive by two men. While Billy tries to talk to them, Boyd scares their horses, causing chaos. Billy and Boyd flee with the girl.

In Part 3, they travel to San Diego. The girl and Boyd grow close, making Billy feel distanced from his brother. When they leave, Boyd argues to let the girl take one of their horses to her home in Namiquipa. Billy reluctantly agrees. They part ways with the intention of meeting up with her a few days later.

The next morning, Billy and Boyd see three of their horses among a herd being led by two men. Without explanation, Billy and Boyd lasso and take their horses. A group led by a one-armed man demands to see, then rejects, their papers of ownership. Billy and Boyd give the horses back. They follow the group and meet another man, Quijada. He hears their story, then makes the men return the horses, providing Billy and Boyd with a writ of ownership.

Later, in town, the one-armed man returns with several compatriots and a pistol and demands the horses. Billy spooks the man’s horse, which throws him, breaking his back. In the confusion, Billy and Boyd leave with their horses, the pistol, and the horses the men were riding. The men catch up to them the next morning and shoot Boyd in the chest. Billy is able to get Boyd to a truck full of workers who promise to take him to the doctor, though all the horses are gone save Niño, Billy’s father’s horse. Billy leads his pursuers away and loses them.

Billy stops at the home of a blind man, a Mexican Revolutionary who had his eyes removed by a captor and was then turned free. He met three people along his journey who each asked him to reflect on the nature of being blind. He concludes that blindness is the more natural state of man.

Billy finds Boyd, injured, in San Diego. He rides to Casas Grandes for a doctor, who treats Boyd for free and promises he will live. Boyd insists that Billy go to Namiquipa to find the girl. He reluctantly does so, and he finds her headed toward San Diego. They travel back together, conversing tensely about their attachment to Boyd. In San Diego, Billy tries to reconcile with Boyd, who says nothing is wrong between them. Billy isn’t surprised when Boyd and the girl leave together.

In Part 4, Billy rides back into America to learn that World War II has begun. He tries to join the army but is rejected for a heart murmur. He spends years working and trying to join the army at different offices. After visiting his lonely old neighbor Sanders, Billy decides to return to Mexico to find his brother.

In Mexico, Boyd has become a folk hero, the güerito (blondie) who is sung about in corridos (folk songs) and whose fate is told in rumors. Billy wanders for weeks, trying to find the truth, and hears a woman singing the song of the güerito and his lover dying in each other’s arms. He eventually encounters Quijada, who confirms that Boyd was shot dead after killing two men who worked for the Hearst estate. The girl’s fate is unknown.

Billy rides to his brother’s grave and exhumes the corpse, intending to take the body home. He is stopped by bandits who demand money. One of them stabs Niño in the chest, tramples Boyd’s remains, and holds a gun to Billy’s head, but he refuses to relent. The bandits leave him.

Billy is discovered by nomads, who treat Niño. Their leader tells Billy about a man who paid them to recover his son’s airplane after he crashed and died in the mountains. Back on the road, Billy meets a man who claims to have hired the nomads; the story they told was all a fabrication.

Billy returns to New Mexico, buries his brother, and camps in an abandoned house after a period of wandering. In the night, a hungry dog comes to the door, and he drives it away in anger. He is woken later by the light from the first nuclear weapons test. As the light fades, Billy cries out for the dog’s return, but it is nowhere to be seen.