John Grady Cole

John Grady Cole is sixteen years old and the main character of this story. Raised by his beloved grandfather on his mother's side, he is frustrated at the loss of the only home he had known. His mother had inherited and then sold the ranch when her father died. Cole is a young man who has lived a rancher's life for sixteen years. Although mature for his age, he is unprepared for the changes overtaking America as traditional values are being replaced with modernization and industrialization. Knowing his home is gone and no family of which he would speak, Cole takes his horse Redbo and leaves. All the Pretty Horses is his coming of age tale. He is homeless and has only the possessions with him to claim as his own. Traveling into Mexico, he will find work with horses, his first love, until he meets...