Thirty years after publication, Cormac McCarthy’s 1994 novel The Crossing – the second installment of the best-selling Border Trilogy – will be honored in a critical edition to be compiled by students at Troy University.
Troy University assistant professor Dr. Patrick Bonds and co-editor Dennis McCarthy, brother of the late author and literary executor, plan to reprint a 50,000-word excerpt from the novel as an independent novella titled The Wolf Trapper.
The project will be the first reprint of a McCarthy text to appear alongside instructional and critical materials, benefiting general readers and students of all ages.
“I've taught this novella for 20 years, many of those at Troy, and this is the book I wished I would have had in class,” Bonds said.
The apparatus will be put together by Troy University students who enroll in Bonds’ Spring 2025 class (ENG 4400) Posthumous Editing and Publishing.
Students in the class will closely read McCarthy’s novella, which follows the story of a 16-year-old as he returns a trapped wolf across the border to the mountains of Mexico.
Students will identify areas of text for annotated footnotes, research third-party contextual materials[PB1] , create maps and compile an index of characters and locations.
“Posthumous editing doesn't have to be finding some fragment or lost manuscript,” Bonds said. “I think this is the very best way to keep the conversation alive about authors who deserve it.”
This project is intended to preserve the legacy of Pulitzer Prize winner Cormac McCarthy who passed away in June of 2023. The book will be the result of a friendship between Bonds and Dennis McCarthy.
“Dennis' favorite writer in the world is his brother, and he strongly feels, like I do, that it's important to teach writers of importance,” Bonds said. “I feel like we would all be cheapened if we didn't read McCarthy generations from now.”
Dr. Kirk Curnutt, chair of the English department, said this class is a rare opportunity for a school as small as Troy. He sees this class as the possible first of many.
“This is really the kind of nuts-and-bolts type of work that anybody in English or journalism would be doing if they worked for either a university press or a trade press,” Curnutt said. “I do see this as a model we could do over and over again with different writers.
“There is a demand out there for projects like this to give readers some context to appreciate great works.”
Bonds said he hopes to have a completed manuscript by January 2026.
[PB1]Third-party materials are published texts that will be reprinted in excerpted form
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