Butcher's Crossing

by John Williams · 1960

Set in the 1870s, John Williams' novel *Butcher's Crossing* follows Harvard dropout Will Andrews, inspired by Emerson to find an "original relation to nature," as he heads west to the remote Kansas town of Butcher's Crossing. There he befriends a buffalo hunter who tells him of a hidden herd in the Colorado Rockies. Andrews joins an expedition that culminates in a brutal, endless slaughter of the buffalo, leaving the men snow‑bound and desperate. The harsh winter and ensuing cabin fever test their sanity, and when spring finally arrives they return to a world irrevocably altered, both externally and within themselves.