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Introduction

Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West, is a 1985 Western novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. It was McCarthy's fifth book and was published by Random House.

The narrative follows a teenage runaway referred to only as "the kid", with the bulk of the text devoted to his experiences with the Glanton gang, a historical group of scalp hunters who massacred Indians and others on the United States–Mexico borderlands in 1849 and 1850. The role of antagonist is gradually filled by the demonic Judge Holden, an extremely large and intelligent man utterly devoted to violence and conflict. Much of the book is based on Glanton gang member Samuel Chamberlain's memoir My Confession, which has been criticized by historians as unreliable. Chamberlain is not a character in Blood Meridian. Critics considered Blood Meridian generally historically accurate, and it includes numerous references to contemporaneous occurrences.

Although the novel initially earned lukewarm critical and commercial reception, it has since become widely recognized not only as McCarthy's masterpiece, but also as one of the acclaimed American novels of the 20th century.