All the Pretty Horses
Chapters - Cormac McCarthy
Chapter 1: I
John Grady Cole, a sixteen-year-old Texan, attends his grandfather's funeral and watches his family's ranch slip away as his mother prepares to sell it. He visits his estranged father and learns his parents have divorced, then sees his mother perform in a play in San Antonio. After a last ride with his father and a final encounter with his ex-girlfriend Mary Catherine, John Grady persuades his friend Lacey Rawlins to ride south with him to Mexico. Along the way they are trailed by a young runaway named Jimmy Blevins, who rides a horse too fine for a boy his age. The three cross the Rio Grande together and travel deep into the Mexican state of Coahuila, where Blevins loses his horse and pistol during a thunderstorm. They find the horse in the town of Encantada and Blevins reclaims it in a chaotic night raid, then vanishes into the desert. John Grady and Rawlins push on and eventually join a cattle drive that leads them to the Hacienda de la Purisima Concepcion, a vast ranch owned by Don Hector Rocha y Villareal, where they are hired as vaqueros.
POV: John Grady Cole·On page: Luisa, Franklin, Lacey Rawlins, Jimmy Blevins, Mary Catherine Barnett, John Grady Cole Sr., John Grady's mother, Arturo·Mentioned: Don Hector Rocha y Villareal
Chapter 2: II
At the hacienda, John Grady and Rawlins break sixteen wild colts in four days, drawing crowds of spectators and earning the respect of the vaqueros. Don Hector invites John Grady to the main house to discuss horses, and impressed by the boy's knowledge, moves him to the barn to oversee the breeding of a new thoroughbred stallion. John Grady encounters Alejandra, Don Hector's seventeen-year-old daughter, while riding, and they begin a secret romance after meeting at a village dance. Meanwhile Duena Alfonsa, Alejandra's great-aunt and godmother, summons John Grady for chess and warns him obliquely about the dangers of his attachment. Rawlins grows uneasy about John Grady's entanglement with the hacendado's daughter. Their idyll ends when armed men arrive at dawn and arrest both Americans, marching them north under guard.
POV: John Grady Cole·On page: Alejandra, Antonio, Luis, Lacey Rawlins, Don Hector Rocha y Villareal, Duena Alfonsa, Esteban (gerente)
Chapter 3: III
John Grady and Rawlins are taken back to the town of Encantada, where they find Blevins imprisoned - he had returned to reclaim his pistol, shot a man, and killed one of the rurales. A captain interrogates and beats them. On the road south, the captain and a charro - the brother of one of Blevins's victims - walk Blevins into the trees at an abandoned estancia and execute him. John Grady and Rawlins are sent on to the prison at Saltillo, a violent institution ruled by a kingpin named Emilio Perez. They fight daily for survival. Rawlins is stabbed crossing the yard and taken to a hospital. Alone, John Grady buys a switchblade from two brothers and barely survives a knife fight with a hired assassin in the mess hall, killing the man but suffering severe wounds. Perez's men carry him to safety and he recovers in a prison infirmary. Both boys are unexpectedly released - Duena Alfonsa has paid for their freedom. Over a meal in Saltillo, Rawlins decides to go home while John Grady resolves to return to the hacienda for Alejandra and the horses.
POV: John Grady Cole·On page: Lacey Rawlins, Jimmy Blevins, Emilio Perez, Captain Raul, The Charro·Mentioned: Alejandra, Duena Alfonsa
Chapter 4: IV
John Grady returns to the hacienda, where Duena Alfonsa tells him the story of her youth, her love for Gustavo Madero, and the destruction wrought by the Mexican Revolution. She explains why she cannot allow Alejandra to be with him, though she gives him permission to see her. He meets Alejandra in Zacatecas and they spend two days together, but she tells him she gave her word to her aunt and will not break it. Heartbroken, he rides back to Encantada and at gunpoint recovers his horse, Rawlins's horse, and Blevins's horse from the corrupt captain, taking a rifle bullet in the leg during the escape. He cauterizes his wound with a heated pistol barrel and crosses back into Texas with the captain as hostage, releasing him at the border. He returns Rawlins's horse to him and they sit together on the prairie, saying goodbye. He rides through west Texas trying to find the rightful owner of Blevins's horse, and a judge in Ozona hears his story and awards him the animal. He visits the judge privately to confess his guilt over the killing in prison and over Blevins's death. He attends Abuela's funeral and learns his father has died. He rides on through the country, passing through the town where he hears the Jimmy Blevins Gospel Hour on the radio, and eventually rides west into a blood-red sunset, a man with no country left to claim.
POV: John Grady Cole·On page: Alejandra, Judge Charles, Captain Raul, Duena Alfonsa, Lacey Rawlins·Mentioned: Jimmy Blevins, Don Hector Rocha y Villareal