Photos courtesy of Miramax Films;
photo at bottom copyright © Van Redin.

 

 

 

 

 





All the Pretty Horses
by Cormac McCarthy

"A modern-day Western full of horses and gunplay and romance, it transcends the bounds of its genre with rambunctious, high-spirited, bottomless inventiveness. All the Pretty Horses is a true American original." --Newsweek

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  • About the Book

    Winner of the National Book Award for Fiction
    and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction

    All the Pretty Horses--the first volume of the Border Trilogy--tells of young John Grady Cole, the last of a long line of Texas ranchers. Across the border Mexico beckons--beautiful and desolate, rugged and cruelly civilized. With two companions, he sets off on an idyllic, sometimes comic adventure, to a place where dreams are paid for in blood.

    "[McCarthy] puts most other American writers to shame. [His] work itself repays the tight focus of his attentions with its finely wrought craftsmanship and its ferocious energy." --The New York Times Book Review

    "[All the Pretty Horses]'s elegiac rhythm captures the badlands of Texas and Northern Mexico with a passion most writers either couldn't muster or wouldn't dare." --Boston Globe

    About the Author

    Cormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933 and spent most of his childhood near Knoxville, Tennessee. He served in the U.S. Air Force and later studied at the University of Tennessee. In 1976 he moved to El Paso, Texas, where he lives today. McCarthy's fiction parallels his movement from the Southeast to the West--the first four novels being set in Tennessee, the last three in the Southwest and Mexico. The Orchard Keeper (1965) won the Faulkner Award for a first novel; it was followed by Outer Dark (1968), Child of God (1973), Suttree (1979), Blood Meridian (1985), and All the Pretty Horses, which won both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award for fiction in 1992.

    Cormac McCarthy's Border Trilogy also includes The Crossing and Cities of the Plain.

    About the Film

    Academy Award-winner Billy Bob Thornton directs Oscar-winner Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz ("All About My Mother") in the film adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's acclaimed best-selling novel, All The Pretty Horses.

    A young Texan named John Grady Cole (Damon) finds himself without a home after his mother sells the ranch where he has spent his entire life. Lured by the romance of cowboy life and the promise of a fresh start, Cole and his pal (Henry Thomas) embark on a journey south of the border.

    Along the way, they cross paths with a volatile 13-year-old misfit (Lucas Black)--an encounter that will precipitate much of the trouble that lies ahead. Before long, Cole falls in love with the beautiful young daughter (Cruz) of a wealthy landowner, an affair forbidden by her family. What follows is an adventure that will test their resilience, define their maturity, and change their lives forever.

    Winner of the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and deemed an instant classic by critics and readers alike, All The Pretty Horses is the first volume of Cormac McCarthy's honored Border Trilogy. Scheduled for release on December 25, 2000, All the Pretty Horses is now a major motion picture from Miramax Films. Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz star in this picturesque epic directed by Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade).

     

     


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