For 10 points, name this American author of violent westerns such as All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian.
One of this author's protagonists observes the "diverging equity" between the "world's pain and its beauty," such that "the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower." In a later book by this author, that character falls in love with an epileptic prostitute working at The White Lake, whose owner kills him in a knife fight. The protagonist cries after failing to call back a badly injured dog he had shooed away at the end of a novel by this author, which begins with him returning a wolf to its home in the mountains. The protagonist uses a heated pistol barrel to (*) cauterize a gunshot wound incurred from his prison escape in a novel by this author that opens at his grandfather's funeral. This author's books Cities of the Plain and The Crossing form the "border" trilogy with his novel in which the Mexican ranch owner's daughter Alejandra has an affair with the cowboy John Grady Cole. For 10 points, name this American author of violent westerns such as All the Pretty Horses and Blood Meridian.
One of this author's protagonists observes the "diverging equity" between the "world's pain and its beauty," such that "the blood of multitudes might ultimately be exacted for the vision of a single flower.
Cormac McCarthy 