Outer Dark
In an isolated Appalachian cabin, Rinthy Holme gives birth alone to a child fathered by her own brother Culla. Ashamed of what they've done, Culla refuses to fetch help and, once the baby is born, carries it into the woods to die — then tells Rinthy the child died of natural causes. She doesn't believe him. While Rinthy sets out on a journey marked mostly by small kindnesses to find the baby she's sure is still alive, Culla is drawn into a far darker road, dogged at every turn by suspicion, violence, and a mysterious trio of strangers responsible for murder, grave-robbing, and worse — crimes for which Culla himself is repeatedly blamed.
A traveling tinker who found the abandoned infant is eventually revealed murdered, and the child consumed by the three strangers, rendering Rinthy's search for it hopeless all along.
Cormac McCarthy's second novel, Outer Dark is an unrelenting, biblically-cadenced Southern Gothic parable of sin, guilt, and a world indifferent to either — unconnected to any of his other books, including the Border Trilogy.
A young, unschooled Appalachian woman who bears her brother's child and sets out alone on a journey to find the infant she is told died of natural causes but refuses to believe is dead.
Rinthy's brother and the father of her child; abandons the newborn in the woods and lies about its death, then flees across a hostile landscape as a fugitive, dogged by suspicion and by the three strangers who commit the crimes he is blamed for.
Outer Dark is a standalone novel — Cormac McCarthy's second book, published in 1968. It isn't connected to any of his other novels, including the Border Trilogy, beyond sharing his recurring Southern Gothic style and Appalachian/Southern settings.
It's written in McCarthy's early, Faulkner-influenced Southern Gothic style — sparse, biblical prose exploring sin, fate, and retribution across an unnamed, timeless Appalachian landscape.