--- product_id: 3584062 title: "Butchers Crossing" price: "COP 146388" currency: COP in_stock: true reviews_count: 13 url: https://www.desertcart.co/products/3584062-butchers-crossing store_origin: CO region: Colombia --- # Butchers Crossing **Price:** COP 146388 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** Butchers Crossing - **How much does it cost?** COP 146388 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.co](https://www.desertcart.co/products/3584062-butchers-crossing) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description Now a major motion picture starring Nicolas Cage and directed by Gabe Polsky. In his National Book Award–winning novel Augustus , John Williams uncovered the secrets of ancient Rome. With Butcher’s Crossing , his fiercely intelligent, beautifully written western, Williams dismantles the myths of modern America. It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been. Review: A realistic Western novel of survival - John Williams' well constructed western novel is minimal in sentiment and takes an even handed approach to the struggles between man and nature. Nature is not evil in Williams' world, like Hemingway he portrays nature as a neutral non-caring force that supports humanity as well as destroys humanity. In this regard, the novel could be compared to the more mythic Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Williams is careful to show that mankind may master many skills when dealing with nature but that a slip or mistake can have fatal non-forgiving consequences. This is an American novel, it speaks of the American national experience in realistic non-romantic passages that take the reader deep into the heart of the North American continent's heart. Williams' writing style is highly organized, there are no tangents or extra flourishes or unnecessary descriptions. Like William James and Nabokov, the story is as tight as a well constructed brick wall, facts and descriptions and experiences all are the precise building blocks for a novel with not a word out of place. I can imagine this novel would be appropriate for a college course on creative writing as an example of a novel that gets to the point, tells the tale, does not digress, makes its points and moves on. The novel is written in three sections and each section is further divided into short chapters. This structure gives the impression that the basic armature and direction of the entire novel was outlined with precision before the first paragraph was written. This is not a criticism; it is an observation that this novel's structure is strong but evident. The great exploration and exploitation of the American west in the 1800s is certainly part of the American myth. The beauty of this novel is that it explores the many themes of exploration and ruthless exploitation of the natural resources in a purely descriptive neutral voice. The great white whale in this novel is the vast power of snow storms in the Rocky Mountains and the untamed roaring rivers and the dry forbidding deserts. Those that hunt the whales in Moby Dick may encounter the great white whale. In Williams' world, those that hunt the buffalo may encounter the consequences of the natural world, the winter in the Rockies. The novel is written from the perspective of a neutral all-seeing narrator but the experiences of young Andrews, a Harvard drop-out, form the journey on which the novel is constructed. Andrews encounters the sage in the person of McDonald, a man who deals with buffalo hide blankets for the European market. Andrews becomes a party to a hunting expedition, which he finances through a small inheritance, with a fascinating charter, Miller, who exemplifies competency and survival instinct in the wild. They are joined by Charley Hoge, a one-armed, camp-cook, wagon driver who seeks protection for a Bible that he can not understand. They are also joined by a wild buffalo skinner, Schneider, a man uncomfortable in the wild and just as uncomfortable among his fellow man. The character of Miller is central to the novel. He is a skilled hunter and very knowledgeable of the wild and survival. He is careful and a leader. He manages and distributes resources, is fair, and controls controversy. The novel however puts Miller to the test for it is Miller's temptation for excess and his pride that put the entire expedition into peril. We witness the fall of the hero here for Williams gradually, chapter after chapter, reveals to us Miller's considerable strengths and abilities, and then as the novel comes to a peak, we now see how the fatal flaws of the hero result in the conditions that bring him down. When the hero is a leader of a tribe, the fatal flaws may bring down the entire tribe. Miller is not the enigmatic Captain Ahab. He is far more present as a fleshy muscular problem-solving pack leader that Ahab. He is more akin to a realistically drawn Ulysses, constantly called upon to offer the solutions that insure survival of the hunting pack. Miller exemplifies the limitations of human cunning and willpower. Some may think that nature seeks revenge against Miller for his excessive slaughter of the buffalo. But Williams' novel presents this peril not as the revenge of a personalized nature but as the simple consequences of excessive human obsession and pride. Williams carefully and beautifully describes the grandeur of nature but he never romanticizes and he never personifies nature. A careful reader will appreciate the considerable control William displays throughout the novel but especially in his resistance to describing nature in any other than natural, realistic, neutral prose. William Andrews, who drops out of Harvard after his third year, seeks the challenge of the west. It is to Williams' credit that Andrews is not a brainless romantic and that he is a fast learning in a world where fast learning is necessary for survival. There is a young pretty prostitute, Francine, and William Andrew's encounters with her before the hunt and after the hunt are testimony to the changes that have been wrought in his personality due to the experiences he had in the winter storms. The character of Charley Hoge is more than a side-kick, for Charley has been touched by nature when he hand froze in a previous expedition and had to be amputated by Miller in the wild. Charley now carries an old Bible which he reads often but understands less. For Charley, the Bible is a talisman against the consequences of nature. Comparisons may be made with Cormac McCarthy's novels but there is an essential distinction. McCarthy sees the evil human being as being more akin to the unfeeling force of nature than to his fellowman. Thus in McCarthy's novels there is often violence of man against man in epic battles not unlike Williams' description of the battle with winder in Butcher's Crossing. This book is exceptional and deserves a wide readership. It is the type of Western novel that is exemplary American literature. Review: Man and nature - If you're considering reading "Butcher's Crossing", chances are you might have already read and enjoyed "Stoner" and/or "Augustus" by the same author, John Williams. Such was the case for me. It was the awesome writing in those two books that recommended Williams' story of 1870s western America, though "...Crossing" could have been written by a completely different author for all the literary and historic distance from First Century BC Rome and mid 20th Century America. What they all have in common is the author's remarkable eye for character, background and, above all, the perfect use of language to evoke place and mood. "Butcher's Crossing" is, on one level, the pursuit of "the meaning of life" by a young man (Will Andrews) from a comfortable if repressed East Coast background. Andrews, like many an American of the period, is drawn to the idea of finding a more interesting reality and future on the Western frontier. His adventure begins with arrival in the Kansas outback village of Butcher's Crossing. The small tent settlement lives off the hunting of buffalo on the near by plains. Andrews falls in with an experienced hunter who takes him and two companions to a mountainous area of the Colorado Territory where there are still large herds of "unharvested" buffalo and where he believes that a great fortune is to be made through a mass slaughter of the animals. The bulk of the story is about what the four men encounter on the hunt and in its aftermath. This is ultimately a saga of tragedy and disappointment for three of the men, but a major shift in life path for the fourth. The narrative in this book is amazing and will not leave any reader unmoved. Author Williams' language brings the reality of each vignette into sharp relief and forces a reaction to it. The methodical killing of the buffalo described in naturalistic, graphic language is perhaps the most affecting part of the story for 21st Century sensibilities, but every conversation between characters, every step along the trail, every description of living through a mountain winter puts the reader in the moment. Wonderful book. A 4+ on the desertcart scale. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #7,809 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #35 in Westerns (Books) #147 in Classic Literature & Fiction #568 in Literary Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.3 out of 5 stars 5,279 Reviews | ## Images ![Butchers Crossing - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81DqkjSYrGL.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A realistic Western novel of survival *by C***S on October 13, 2012* John Williams' well constructed western novel is minimal in sentiment and takes an even handed approach to the struggles between man and nature. Nature is not evil in Williams' world, like Hemingway he portrays nature as a neutral non-caring force that supports humanity as well as destroys humanity. In this regard, the novel could be compared to the more mythic Moby Dick by Herman Melville. Williams is careful to show that mankind may master many skills when dealing with nature but that a slip or mistake can have fatal non-forgiving consequences. This is an American novel, it speaks of the American national experience in realistic non-romantic passages that take the reader deep into the heart of the North American continent's heart. Williams' writing style is highly organized, there are no tangents or extra flourishes or unnecessary descriptions. Like William James and Nabokov, the story is as tight as a well constructed brick wall, facts and descriptions and experiences all are the precise building blocks for a novel with not a word out of place. I can imagine this novel would be appropriate for a college course on creative writing as an example of a novel that gets to the point, tells the tale, does not digress, makes its points and moves on. The novel is written in three sections and each section is further divided into short chapters. This structure gives the impression that the basic armature and direction of the entire novel was outlined with precision before the first paragraph was written. This is not a criticism; it is an observation that this novel's structure is strong but evident. The great exploration and exploitation of the American west in the 1800s is certainly part of the American myth. The beauty of this novel is that it explores the many themes of exploration and ruthless exploitation of the natural resources in a purely descriptive neutral voice. The great white whale in this novel is the vast power of snow storms in the Rocky Mountains and the untamed roaring rivers and the dry forbidding deserts. Those that hunt the whales in Moby Dick may encounter the great white whale. In Williams' world, those that hunt the buffalo may encounter the consequences of the natural world, the winter in the Rockies. The novel is written from the perspective of a neutral all-seeing narrator but the experiences of young Andrews, a Harvard drop-out, form the journey on which the novel is constructed. Andrews encounters the sage in the person of McDonald, a man who deals with buffalo hide blankets for the European market. Andrews becomes a party to a hunting expedition, which he finances through a small inheritance, with a fascinating charter, Miller, who exemplifies competency and survival instinct in the wild. They are joined by Charley Hoge, a one-armed, camp-cook, wagon driver who seeks protection for a Bible that he can not understand. They are also joined by a wild buffalo skinner, Schneider, a man uncomfortable in the wild and just as uncomfortable among his fellow man. The character of Miller is central to the novel. He is a skilled hunter and very knowledgeable of the wild and survival. He is careful and a leader. He manages and distributes resources, is fair, and controls controversy. The novel however puts Miller to the test for it is Miller's temptation for excess and his pride that put the entire expedition into peril. We witness the fall of the hero here for Williams gradually, chapter after chapter, reveals to us Miller's considerable strengths and abilities, and then as the novel comes to a peak, we now see how the fatal flaws of the hero result in the conditions that bring him down. When the hero is a leader of a tribe, the fatal flaws may bring down the entire tribe. Miller is not the enigmatic Captain Ahab. He is far more present as a fleshy muscular problem-solving pack leader that Ahab. He is more akin to a realistically drawn Ulysses, constantly called upon to offer the solutions that insure survival of the hunting pack. Miller exemplifies the limitations of human cunning and willpower. Some may think that nature seeks revenge against Miller for his excessive slaughter of the buffalo. But Williams' novel presents this peril not as the revenge of a personalized nature but as the simple consequences of excessive human obsession and pride. Williams carefully and beautifully describes the grandeur of nature but he never romanticizes and he never personifies nature. A careful reader will appreciate the considerable control William displays throughout the novel but especially in his resistance to describing nature in any other than natural, realistic, neutral prose. William Andrews, who drops out of Harvard after his third year, seeks the challenge of the west. It is to Williams' credit that Andrews is not a brainless romantic and that he is a fast learning in a world where fast learning is necessary for survival. There is a young pretty prostitute, Francine, and William Andrew's encounters with her before the hunt and after the hunt are testimony to the changes that have been wrought in his personality due to the experiences he had in the winter storms. The character of Charley Hoge is more than a side-kick, for Charley has been touched by nature when he hand froze in a previous expedition and had to be amputated by Miller in the wild. Charley now carries an old Bible which he reads often but understands less. For Charley, the Bible is a talisman against the consequences of nature. Comparisons may be made with Cormac McCarthy's novels but there is an essential distinction. McCarthy sees the evil human being as being more akin to the unfeeling force of nature than to his fellowman. Thus in McCarthy's novels there is often violence of man against man in epic battles not unlike Williams' description of the battle with winder in Butcher's Crossing. This book is exceptional and deserves a wide readership. It is the type of Western novel that is exemplary American literature. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Man and nature *by B***) on March 29, 2011* If you're considering reading "Butcher's Crossing", chances are you might have already read and enjoyed "Stoner" and/or "Augustus" by the same author, John Williams. Such was the case for me. It was the awesome writing in those two books that recommended Williams' story of 1870s western America, though "...Crossing" could have been written by a completely different author for all the literary and historic distance from First Century BC Rome and mid 20th Century America. What they all have in common is the author's remarkable eye for character, background and, above all, the perfect use of language to evoke place and mood. "Butcher's Crossing" is, on one level, the pursuit of "the meaning of life" by a young man (Will Andrews) from a comfortable if repressed East Coast background. Andrews, like many an American of the period, is drawn to the idea of finding a more interesting reality and future on the Western frontier. His adventure begins with arrival in the Kansas outback village of Butcher's Crossing. The small tent settlement lives off the hunting of buffalo on the near by plains. Andrews falls in with an experienced hunter who takes him and two companions to a mountainous area of the Colorado Territory where there are still large herds of "unharvested" buffalo and where he believes that a great fortune is to be made through a mass slaughter of the animals. The bulk of the story is about what the four men encounter on the hunt and in its aftermath. This is ultimately a saga of tragedy and disappointment for three of the men, but a major shift in life path for the fourth. The narrative in this book is amazing and will not leave any reader unmoved. Author Williams' language brings the reality of each vignette into sharp relief and forces a reaction to it. The methodical killing of the buffalo described in naturalistic, graphic language is perhaps the most affecting part of the story for 21st Century sensibilities, but every conversation between characters, every step along the trail, every description of living through a mountain winter puts the reader in the moment. Wonderful book. A 4+ on the Amazon scale. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Brilliant! On a Par with McCarthy's BLOOD MERIDIAN *by S***S on August 27, 2007* If such a thing as the Great American Novel can be said to exist, it would very likely encompass the country's 19th Century westward expansion. After all, it was this irresistible land grab - with its ruthless expulsion and genocide of native Americans, its hunting to exinction of buffalo, and its struggles against Nature in search of the better life - that defined America's cultural personality and self-image for the following 150 - 200 years. The rootless but ever-hopeful individualist, the lonely conqueror of Nature, the rugged Marlboro Man begat the robber barons and industrialists, the real estate, oil, and hedge fund tycoons, the Internet entrepreneurs, and even the self-righteous, Iraq-invading neoconservatives. Amazingly, John Williams's utterly brilliant BUTCHER'S CROSSING - perhaps, indeed, THE Great American Novel - appears to have gone largely unnoticed among the general reading public. Published in 1960, five years before the author's equally impressive STONER and 25 years before Cormac McCarthy's deservedly renowned BLOOD MERIDIAN, BUTCHER'S CROSSING encapsulates many of the American West's mythologies. Yet Williams is hardly a romantic in his interpretation. He presents the opening West as harsh and brutal, populated by socially challenged obsessives who view the land and everything in it as their private domains, seized by choice and held by force of will and gun. Williams's ostensible hero is William Andrews, fresh from three years at Harvard and seeking an adventure in the West with a childlike enthusiasm and understanding. His mind filled by a romantic, Emerson-inspired view of Nature and his pockets filled with an inheritance from his uncle, Andrews heads for the decidedly uninspired, six-building town of Butcher's Crossing, Kansas. Within a matter of days, greenhorn Will has met the local buffalo hide trader McDonald and a long-time buffalo hunter named Miller. The traditional hunting grounds in Kansas have already been depleted to the point where only small herds of a few hundred animals can be found. However, Miller had discovered a hidden mountain valley in Colorado nine years earlier teeming with buffalo and has been waiting for enough money to finance the expedition. In return for accompanying the party as an apprentice hide skinner, Andrews underwrites the hunt. Miller recruits his neurotic sidekick, the Bible-beating Charley Hoge as the wagon man and a taciturn German named Schneider as their skinner. While Miller is away purchasing the necessary supplies, Will meets a prostitute named Francine. She falls for his soft hands and not yet hardened heart, but the immature Will is frightened off by her aggressive sexuality. The bulk of BUTCHER'S CROSSING concerns the journey to find the buffalo, Miller's rediscovery of his Shangri-la valley, the hunt itself, the life-threatening storms the group endures, and finally, the difficult return trip to Butcher's Crossing to sell their hides. Along the way, Williams's book becomes a classic coming of age story, a discourse on ecology and species survival, and the story of an irrational, Ahab-like obsession that nearly ends in the men's destruction. In the end, Williams levies his own ironic form of judgment against Miller and McDonald for their repeated violations of Nature. Despite reconciling his feelings for Francine on his return to town, Andrews's future in the West is left deliberately uncertain. Perhaps he has finally learned to live with and respect Nature and will eventually find his rightful place. Or perhaps he, too, will be punished for his sins, forever banished to wandering the wilds alone, scarred by the real-life education he so enthusiastically sought from Miller. Throughout the book, Williams's writing is sparse and direct, unsparing in its treatment of the men's deprivations and the bloodiness of the hunt. His characters are distinctive and memorable; although we never see deeply inside them, we know them for the archetypes they are. Dialog is limited and short, as these are men of few words. The overall effect of the writing remarkably prefigures that of Cormac McCarthy without the density and compound, run-on sentences, resulting in a highly readable and deeply engaging page turner. Fans of McCarthy will certainly appreciate Williams's accomplishment here, but I believe BUTCHER'S CROSSING merits a much wider audience. This is a magnificent but regrettably under-recognized work of literature that feels timeless in its writing style and enduring in its themes. ## Frequently Bought Together - Butcher's Crossing (New York Review Books Classics) - Stoner (New York Review Books Classics) - Augustus (New York Review Books Classics) --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.co/products/3584062-butchers-crossing](https://www.desertcart.co/products/3584062-butchers-crossing) --- *Product available on Desertcart Colombia* *Store origin: CO* *Last updated: 2026-05-30*