Set in the anarchic world opened up by America s westward expansion, Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy is an epic and potent account of the barbarous violence that man visits upon man. Through the hostile landscape of the Texas-Mexico border wanders the Kid, a fourteen year-old Tennessean who is quickly swept-up in the relentless tide of blood. But the apparent chaos is not without its order: while Americans hunt Indians – collecting scalps as their bloody trophies – they too are stalked as prey.