A harrowing descent into isolation, violence and the darkest reaches of human nature, Child of God is an early expression of the uncompromising vision that would come to define Cormac McCarthy.

Set in the hill country of East Tennessee, the novel follows Lester Ballard, a dispossessed and solitary man living at the edges of society. After losing his home, Ballard retreats deeper into the wilderness and further from the community that has rejected him, taking refuge first in an abandoned cabin and eventually in a network of mountain caves.

As his isolation grows, so does his capacity for violence, and what begins as the story of an outcast becomes something far more brutal. Yet McCarthy refuses to render Ballard as simply monstrous. Described as “a child of God much like yourself perhaps,” he remains recognizably human even as his actions become increasingly horrific, forcing the reader to confront the razor’s edge upon which civilization and savagery meet.

First published by Random House in 1973, Child of God was McCarthy’s third novel, following The Orchard Keeper and Outer Dark, and continued his exploration of the Appalachian South that would characterize his early work.

Horrifying and darkly beautiful, Child of God is a chilling examination of what is left of a human being when society, morality and every familiar boundary have fallen away.