All the Pretty Horses
All the Pretty Horses tells the story of John Grady Cole, a sixteen-year-old Texan who decides to leave his family’s ranch and ride to Mexico with his best friend, Rawlins. On the way they are joined by a younger boy, Jimmy Blevins, riding a magnificent horse that Rawlins think is stolen. Blevins naively loses the horse and all his belongings during a storm. The three boys travel on and arrive in Encantada , where they see Blevins’s horse. They steal the horse back and escape, but Blevins gets separated in the confusion.
Grady and Rawlins get a job on the ranch of don Hector Rocha , a rich landowner whose wife spends most of her time in Mexico City. Grady falls in love with don Hector’s beautiful daughter, Alejandra, but don Hector is outraged at their relationship and sends Alejandra to live With her mother in the city.
Some nights later don Hector has Grady and Rawlins arrested. The police take them back to Encantada, where they find Blevins already in jail for shooting the man who stole this horse. The police captain kills Blevins, but take Grady and Rawlins to Castelar, a prison in Saltillo that is notorious for its corruption and violence. The boys soon get into a knife fight that leaves Rawlins badly hut. Eventually the two boys are released when Alejandra’s aunt, who also lost her true love when she was young, pays the prison guards. Rawlins goes home, but Grady decides to see Alejandra once more. She tells him she cannot disappoint her father, and Grady is heartbroken. Before he return to Texas, Grady kidnaps the police captain and takes him to the ranch where the horses are. While Grady is on the ranch, he is short in the leg but manages to escape with the horses across the border. At the end of the book Grady goes looking for Rawlins, but the discovers they have both changed forever.