Outer Dark

A dark, nihilistic tale, Cormac McCarthy's second novel Outer Dark sees brother and sister wander separately through a countryside scourged by three terrifying and elusive strangers.

In an unspecified place in Appalachia, sometime around the beginning of the twentieth century, a woman named Rinthy bears her brother's child.

The brother, Culla, abandons the baby in the woods, and tells Rinthy that he...