military personnel received their training in Texas for the Army Air Force, Texas offered the biggest aviation training region “anywhere in the United States and probably on earth” (Frantz, p. World War II kept Texas oil extraction and processing operating at peak production levels and also brought to the state large military installations where men were trained and weapons tested. Oil would eventually be discovered in West Texas, so that, in the words of a twentieth-century historian of the region, “one could drive one hundred and fifty miles without ever losing sight of oil derricks” (Frantz, p. In 1928 Texas became the country’s leading oil-producing state with a total annual output of over 250 million barrels. From the discovery of the huge Spindle-top field, opened in 1901, to the East Texas oil finds of the 1930s, oil had been the driving force that transformed Texas from an agricultural and cattle-raising economy into a major industrial power in the United States. At the time, the state of Texas was still enjoying the economic boom that the exploitation of large oil reserves had brought with it. Events in History at the Time the Novel Takes Place Texas at midcenturyĪll the Pretty Horses opens in the fall of 1949.

With All the Pretty Horses, Cormac McCarthy achieved a memorable combination of adventure, psychological intensity, and the violent clash of cultures. McCarthy’s 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses became the first novel of his “Border Trilogy,” followed by The Crossing (1994) and Cities of the Plain (1998). Blood Meridian (1985) is a Gothic historical novel about outlaws and bounty hunters set in Texas and Mexico at the middle of the nineteenth century. Through a series of books that have appeared since then, McCarthy has pursued his fascination with remote regions of the United States and Mexico, rural communities, and lone individuals who refuse the mediation of the modern world in their struggles with fate or with the forces of nature. His first novel, The Orchard Keeper, was published in 1965. Alejandra, which leads to a chain of drama and violence as the two Americans try to escape with their lives.Įvents in History at the Time the Novel Takes PlaceĮvents in History at the Time the Novel Was WrittenĬormac McCarthy was born in Rhode Island in 1933, lived in Tennessee, and moved to El Paso, Texas, 25 years ago. While employed on a large ranch in the mountains of Coahuila, John Cole falls in love with the owner’s daughter.

two young Texans who love to work with horses, cross into Mexico looking for work as cowboys. John Grady Cole and his friend Lacey Rawlins. A novel, set in West Texas and northern Mexico in 1950 first published in 1992.

All the pretty horses full book