The Crossing recap

Before the Second World War, New Mexico teenager Billy Parham captures a wolf preying on local cattle and decides to return her alive to Mexico. Men seize the wolf and force her into fights; Billy kills her to end her suffering. He comes home to find his parents murdered, the family's horses stolen, and his brother Boyd left as his only close relation. The brothers cross into Mexico to recover the horses. Boyd is shot, falls in love with a local girl, and chooses to remain behind, while Billy returns north alone. On a later journey Billy learns that Boyd became a celebrated outlaw and has been killed. He exhumes Boyd's body and carries the bones home despite robbery and hardship, aided by traveling gypsies. After burying his brother, Billy is rejected for military service because of a heart condition. The book closes years later with the homeless, solitary Billy driving away a wounded dog, searching for it in remorse, and finally breaking down when he cannot find it.

In the previously published first Border Trilogy novel, young Texas rancher John Grady Cole traveled to Mexico with his friend Lacey Rawlins after his family ranch was sold. John Grady became an expert horse trainer on a large estate and fell in love with the owner's daughter, Alejandra. The relationship led to arrest, imprisonment, and a violent struggle to survive. Alejandra ultimately refused to leave her family for him. John Grady recovered stolen horses and returned to Texas, but found that the home and people he had hoped to reclaim were disappearing. The Crossing follows different central characters and begins earlier in time, so no event from that story is required to understand Billy Parham's journey.

In the years before the Second World War, sixteen-year-old Billy Parham lives with his parents and younger brother Boyd on a ranch in southern New Mexico. A pregnant wolf crossing from Mexico has been killing cattle, and Billy studies her tracks and seeks advice from experienced trappers before finally catching her alive. Instead of killing the animal, he secretly leads her south, intending to return her to the Mexican mountains. The journey brings hunger, official interference, and people eager to claim or exploit the wolf. Men eventually take her from Billy and make her fight dogs for spectators. Unable to free her, Billy shoots her to end the suffering and carries her body into the mountains for burial. When he returns after weeks away, he finds his parents murdered, the ranch looted, and the family's horses stolen. Boyd has survived, but the brothers' former home is gone.

Billy and Boyd cross into Mexico to recover their stolen horses. Their search moves through ranches and villages where claims of ownership depend less on the brothers' certainty than on documents, local power, and the willingness of others to help. They recover some animals but repeatedly encounter armed resistance. A nameless girl joins their path and forms a close bond with Boyd. During a confrontation Boyd is shot in the chest. Mexican villagers shelter him, and the girl helps nurse him through a long recovery while Billy waits and works. Boyd's attachment to the girl and to Mexico deepens. When he is strong enough to choose, he refuses the return Billy has imagined and leaves with her. Billy, unable to compel him and no longer able to restore their family life, turns north and crosses back into the United States alone.

After time in the United States, Billy crosses the border again to look for Boyd. Stories have transformed his younger brother into a local figure associated with resistance and outlawry, but the living Boyd remains difficult to locate behind contradictory reports. Billy follows accounts of Boyd and the girl through communities where memory, rumor, and legend have become inseparable. He eventually learns that Boyd has been killed and buried in Mexico. The discovery ends any hope of bringing his brother home alive, but it gives Billy one last family duty. He locates the grave and resolves to carry Boyd's remains back to New Mexico, returning once more to the northbound route that has followed each of his losses.

Billy brings Boyd's remains across the border and buries his brother in New Mexico. His parents are dead, his brother is gone, and the ranching home of his youth cannot be restored. After the United States enters the war, Billy tries to enlist but is rejected because examiners find a problem with his heart. He passes through the following years without a permanent home, carrying losses that his repeated journeys have not resolved. Near the close he takes shelter in an abandoned place and encounters a battered stray dog. Irritated or frightened by the animal, he drives it into the night. Remorse follows almost immediately, and he searches for the dog, calling after it, but it does not return. At dawn Billy sits alone in the road and weeps. His last attempted act of mercy has failed, leaving him with the accumulated grief of the wolf, his family, Boyd, and the vanished world to which he cannot go back.

Billy finds Boyd's grave in Mexico, exhumes the remains, and begins carrying them home. Robbers attack him on the northward journey, scatter the bones, and injure his horse. A band of traveling gypsies helps him gather the remains, mend his equipment, and continue. Billy succeeds in bringing Boyd back across the border and buries him in New Mexico. With his parents dead, Boyd gone, and the family ranch no longer a home, Billy has little left to return to. He attempts to enlist after the United States enters the Second World War, but a heart condition leads the military to reject him. Years pass with Billy moving through temporary work and an altered landscape. In an abandoned building he encounters a maimed stray dog and drives it away in anger. Regretting the act, he goes after the animal but cannot find it. Alone at daybreak, he sits in the road and weeps, ending the novel with grief that he can neither repair nor escape.