Child of God

Child of God is a 1973 novel by American author Cormac McCarthy. Narrating the life of Appalachian serial killer Lester Ballard, McCarthy’s third novel explores the themes which would become hallmarks of his work, including violence, outcast-status and an interest in the history of working-class America. These themes saturate many of McCarthy’s most famous novels, including Blood Meridian (1985), All the Pretty Horses (National Book Award winner 1992) and The Road (Pulitzer Prize 2006). In 2012, Child of God was adapted into a film of the same name by director James Franco.

The novel opens on an auction in Sevier County, Tennessee. Lester’s family property has been repossessed by the bank. Lester interrupts the auction with a rifle, threatening to shoot the auctioneer, before he is knocked down and hauled away by a local man, with the approval of the sheriff, Fate Turner. The auction continues and Lester’s former property is sold to an out-of-towner, John Greer.

Lester moves his possessions into a tiny, run-down cabin in the forest. He pays a call on his neighbor, Fred Kirby, and asks him for a drink. When Lester admits he can’t pay Fred back at once, Fred refuses, and Lester leaves in a rage. Later, Lester visits the owner of the local dump, in order to flirt (unsuccessfully) with the man’s nine daughters.



We learn a little about Lester’s past. As a boy, he was bullied at school and got into fights. He has been an outsider in his community ever since. His father hanged himself.

He spends most of his time wandering aimlessly through Sevierville and the wilderness beyond. One night, he comes across a young couple having sex in a car. He watches them, fascinated, until he is spotted and runs into the forest. He stays there for several days, having increasingly strange experiences that suggest he might be losing his mind.

He finds a woman in a nightdress sleeping under a tree, and wakes her, concerned that she will freeze to death. She is startled, they fight, and Lester rips off her nightdress before he runs away. Sometime later, Darfuzzle warns Lester that the woman in the nightdress went to the police. Darfuzzle adds that there is another suspect, already in jail.



The Sherriff finds Lester and arrests him. The woman has told the police that she was raped, and Sheriff Turner accuses Lester, who denies raping the woman. In the Sevier County jail, Lester becomes friendly with another prisoner, a black man named John. Lester cannot follow what happens next, but the narrative implies that John is murdered for raping the woman: some days after John’s disappearance, Lester is released.

Lester catches a robin and, hoping to impress a local girl, gives it to her mentally disabled son, who chews the bird’s legs off. Lester is amused, but the girl is horrified.

Out hunting squirrels with his rifle, Lester spots another couple in an idling car. However, when he approaches, he finds that the couple is dead. He has sex with the woman’s body, steals money and whiskey he finds in the car, and then drags the woman’s body back to his cabin.



Lester buys sexy underwear in town and brings it back to put on the corpse, but that night his cabin burns down. He takes the few possessions he manages to retrieve and moves into a cave. He begins to indulge fantasies of killing Greer, the new owner of his auctioned-off family home.

Lester pays another visit to the local girl with the disabled son. This time he asks outright to see her breast. She refuses and Lester leaves quietly, only to shoot the girl through the window. He sets fire to her house and takes her body back to his cave.

The Sheriff brings Lester in for questioning, but he has no evidence against him and Lester is released. By now, we learn, he has amassed several bodies in his cave. He stalks the mountain looking for new victims, and when he doesn’t find anyone, he goes to a spot overlooking his family home to watch Greer.



The Sheriff and his deputy find a car at the bottom of a gully. When it was last seen, a young couple was driving it, but neither body is in the car. Later, a young man escapes from Lester while Lester is occupied dragging away his girlfriend’s body. The townspeople search the mountain, looking for a serial killer, and Lester flees across the river, taking up residence in a sinkhole.

Lester returns to his family home and shoots Greer in the chest. As he flees, Lester is shot; when he wakes up he is in the hospital, and one of his arms has been amputated. A nurse informs him that Greer is alive.

A group of local men threatens to kill Lester unless he admits to his crimes and tells them where to find the bodies of the people he has murdered. Lester feigns innocence, and the men prepare to lynch him. Lester agrees to take them to the bodies. He leads them to a network of mountain caves, where there is a narrow crevice only he can fit through, and escapes.



After three days wandering in the caves, Lester finds a crack in the rock and chips a way out. Delirious, he returns to the hospital. He is taken to a mental asylum, where he dies.

In the spring after Lester’s death, a sinkhole opens on a nearby farm: in the cavern beneath, seven bodies are found.

Lester’s story is loosely based on a real historical figure, and Child of God contains a wealth of incidental detail about the history of Sevier County, Tennessee.