Amodern-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.

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 beckonsbeautiful 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.