Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited

"Through this telling of McCarthy’s life, Daugherty has begun the work that one hopes literary biography can do: unearth the story of how the art escaped the confines of the flawed life that yielded it.“ —New York Times

A biography of the late Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Cormac McCarthy, from Tracy Daugherty, the New York Times bestselling author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist biography Larry McMurtry: A Life.

Cormac McCarthy is hailed as one of America’s greatest novelists. In his body of work, the nation’s story is told in incomparably vivid shades of violence, greed, and love. And yet, most of his personal story has been largely untold—until now.

Early in life, McCarthy chose to devote himself almost exclusively to his literary pursuits. Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited movingly details what this choice cost him in his family relationships, his marriages, and his friendships. Mentally and physically restless, often solitary and yet gregarious and charming, McCarthy lived as wildly, complexly, and close to the bone as any of his characters, journeying often to remote locations, communing deeply with the natural world, and traversing intricate emotional and psychological terrain. In his novels, he reported wisdom hard-learned through harsh experience and intense observation.

With precision and grace, Cormac McCarthy: A Legacy Revisited recounts his story from poverty to riches, obscurity to worldwide acclaim, and unveils the man behind the myth in a must-read biography for both lifelong fans and new McCarthy readers alike.