The Son

The oil business booms, though many of the town’s competing families have yet to strike proven oil deposits. Peter falls deeper in love with María and becomes recklessly open about their relationship. One day, Peter nearly fights a drunk American man who makes a lewd comment about María, though María stops him.

Peter and María leave the city and lie out in the pasture, imagining what it must have been like in the time of the buffalo. Peter affirms his desire to be with her. He has a hard time imagining that Eli might have ever had similar experiences.

The American Civil War puts an end to Eli’s days as a Texas Ranger. Texas joins the war on the side of the Confederacy, which Eli supports since white and Indigenous people alike practice enslavement. He enlists and is sent to conquer New Mexico, though this battle ends in a Confederate retreat.

On leave, Eli stays at Judge Black’s house. He becomes the subject of the judge’s daughters’ admiration, though Eli knows they are expected to marry reputable men. One night, the judge’s eldest daughter, Madeline, comes into Eli’s room and seduces him. They have sex several times. Eli is careful not to get her pregnant.

Just before Eli is redeployed, Judge Black confronts him about his relationship with Madeline. He doesn’t want them together but knows that Madeline wants to be with Eli, so he is forced to approve their marriage. He warns that Eli’s lifestyle might leave Madeline a widow. Eli promises to protect her, but Judge Black is afraid that Eli’s promise won’t stop the world from trying to harm her.

Jeannie becomes more careful about her position in the industry, especially after some of Hank’s former associates try to take advantage of her to benefit their own business interests. To purge the company of traitors, Jeannie fires everyone except the company secretary. She exercises greater control over her new employees, learning more about the business by closely studying their jobs. She also builds her endurance for work, as well as her mental skills for arithmetic.

Jeannie still observes some resistance from the industry men, noticing that the other tycoons refuse to trust her because she is a woman, even though they trusted Hank. She decides to spend seven days a week at the office, removing all photos of her family to bolster her credibility. Her daughter Susan grows rebellious, which affects Jeannie.

The oil rush continues, causing the drillers to fear violence between the landowners.

Eli sells enough leases of proven land to sustain the family fortune for several generations. One of the senior ranch hands, Sullivan, tries to get Peter to understand that the cattle business is no longer profitable. When Peter shifts the topic to María Garcia, Sullivan suggests that Peter or Sally might die before Peter can validate his new relationship.

María shares that she never married because men don’t respect her agency. She tells another story, this time about a vaquero who falls in love with a rancher’s daughter. The vaquero brings the girl her favorite white stallion to convince her to marry him. Unbeknownst to both of them, they are being watched by the son of another white rancher, who plots against the vaquero. After he has the vaquero shot, the rancher’s son attempts to retrieve his body. When the stallion blocks him, the son kills the stallion and takes the vaquero’s head as a prize. The rancher’s daughter dies by suicide. The spirit of the vaquero lives on, riding a ghost stallion and carrying his head while he seeks the spirit of his beloved.

Peter tells her an alternate version of the folktale. In his version, the men fear a black stallion and its headless rider. Whenever the men try to shoot the rider, the bullets pass through him. One night, they shoot the horse instead of the rider. They learn that two Texans tied the corpse of a Mexican thief to the horse to make an example of him.

María identifies Peter’s story as the true version but criticizes it for lionizing the white Texans at the expense of Mexicans. She suggests that if they have children, they should tell them the true version.

After he refuses to fight Comanche bands, Eli is sent to the Indian Territories to fight alongside Indigenous people. Eli is promoted to the rank of colonel so that he can command a Cherokee company. Most of their raids involve disrupting Union mobility in Kansas and Missouri.

During his summer leave, Eli returns to Austin. He hesitates to enter Judge Black’s mansion and nearly turns away, except that Madeline and their son Everett are waiting for him at the door. Madeline comments that Eli feels increasingly distant every time he comes home. She offers to get him work, but Eli declines. Madeline points out that Eli seems to prefer the army’s company to hers.

Madeline later complains that Eli has no sense of how lonely her life is without him. She worries that this complaint will be his last memory of her.

Several years later, Jeannie is upset when one of her long-time employees asks about loyalty benefits. She has become tired of working and does not follow through on her usual habits, such as checking the stock market. At home, she becomes upset once again when she finds out that her housekeeper, Dolores, has thrown a party in her house without her permission. She reassesses her habit of satisfying other people’s needs to earn their respect.

Jeannie enters a new relationship with a man named Ted, who gives her a level of attention she never got from Hank. She dislikes Ted’s lack of seriousness, however, which he developed growing up in a rich family. Ted bonds with Jeannie’s sons, Thomas and Benjamin. Susan, on the other hand, distances herself from her mother, spending summers with her cousins in Maine.

Sally announces that she is returning to the ranch. Peter confronts Eli, believing he has orchestrated Sally’s return. Eli reminds Peter that he is still married.

On the day Sally arrives, Peter tries to skip work so that he can keep María company, but María assures him things will be okay. Later, Phineas arrives and convinces María to leave by offering her $10,000. Peter is furious with them for conspiring against him. He loads his gun but stops when he sees a shadow waiting for him. The shadow’s face keeps changing, first from Eli’s to Peter’s, then to someone else. Peter decides to follow María to Torreón, Mexico.

After a disastrous winter, Eli’s company encounters a heavy Union caravan hauling weapons to Denver. Eli wants to charge the caravan. His company members fear that the weapon may be used against them. Though they kill most of the caravan guards without a fight, the remaining Union soldiers fire the weapon, which turns out to be a heavy machine gun. The Confederates strike back when it runs out of ammo.

The only caravan survivor turns out to be a salesman for the gun manufacturer Gatling. He tries to sell a machine gun to Eli’s company, but the Cherokee fighters stab him to death before he can finish his pitch. They destroy the gun and chide Eli once they realize that he was aware of the gun’s existence. The Cherokee nation withdraws from the war, fearing that the gun will lead to their extinction. The two remaining white Confederates decide to flee to California, knowing that Union victory is imminent. Eli declines to join them, preferring to meet his fate. When he arrives in Austin, he learns that the war has been over for months.

Jeannie is invited to a Honey Hunt, a social gathering where men go out into the woods to look for sex workers they’d hired. Ted worries that the men may try to humiliate Jeannie but knows that going matters to her because she wants to validate herself in the businessmen’s eyes.

At the Honey Hunt, Jeannie eats and drinks with the men, who are relieved to learn she won’t be staying for long. When the sex workers arrive, one of them gives Jeannie a lap dance and kisses her. Jeannie tries to stop her reaction. Turning in early, she wonders if Hank ever participated in this kind of gathering. The next morning, she dismisses those thoughts and leaves. Wrestling with her need to belong, she concludes that coming to the Honey Hunt was a mistake.

Peter travels to Torreón with Sullivan and another worker named Jorge to look for María. He learns that Phineas and Sally wanted to remove María from the estate because her presence could damage their reputations. Jorge conducts a search but does not produce any leads. The search becomes dangerous when their car is stolen. They call Phineas and Eli for help. The police escort them out of town.

Peter enlists private detectives to look for María in Mexico. Sally tries to get Peter to accept that María is gone. She offers to start their marriage over, but Peter is too committed to María to agree to her terms. Sally angrily leaves.

Eli moves back into Judge Black’s house but is frustrated by town life. The judge encourages him to find a job instead of moving out to the frontier, which remains risky due to Indigenous raids.

Judge Black runs for Senate as a Republican but is killed during the campaign. Eli plots revenge against the town’s affluent families, unsure which of them perpetrated the murder. Madeline convinces him to give up his grudge. They relocate to a farm in Georgetown, which Eli expands by purchasing parcels in other counties.

Eli becomes acquainted with his neighbor, Arturo Garcia, who owns much of the land surrounding Eli’s property. Eli outbids Arturo on a parcel that connects his disjointed parcels to the farm. The commissioner warns Eli that Arturo is rumored to work with thieves, which makes him undesirable in the government’s eyes.

Jeannie’s son Ben excels at academics, which puts him at odds with his siblings, neither of whom seem to care about education. Susan remains distant, only calling to ask Jeannie for money. Thomas remains at home, content with the safety net of his wealth. It becomes unspoken knowledge that Thomas is gay.

Jeannie refocuses her assets into domestic oil, having become disillusioned with foreign oil after a visit to the Middle East. Her instincts are validated by the 1973 oil crisis, though no one admires her for it. She instead seeks support from her family.

When Ben suddenly dies in a car accident, Thomas blames Jeannie and distances himself from her. Jeannie moves in with Ted and grows cynical about life. She attempts to write a memoir. The oil boom is over by the early 1980s, leaving Jeannie to consider selling the ranch and moving closer to her brother Jonas.

One day, a Mexican woman named Adelina Garcia visits, claiming to be the daughter of Peter McCullough. Jeannie refuses to believe her and later dismisses her fears about the woman’s claims. She reflects on the way her wealth makes her feel nothing at all, causing her to resemble Eli.

Ulises Garcia grows up in Mexico with his widowed mother and his grandparents. His grandfather has worked as a ranch hand his entire life, prompting Ulises to think he is destined for the same kind of life. Looking through his mother’s suitcase, he finds the birth certificate of his grandmother, Adelina Garcia, and is struck by the name of Adelina’s father, Peter McCullough. Adelina and her son tried to reach out to the McCulloughs at different points in time but were both refused. Ulises fantasizes about attempting a visit and being accepted.

In 2011, Ulises gets a job as a cattle wrangler at the McCullough ranch. He is unable to leave the property for fear of being deported. He nevertheless sneaks into town on occasion, spending his salary on clothes and remittances to his grandparents. He learns that J.A. McCullough has no one to succeed her. This encourages Ulises to speak to her.

Peter continues to be haunted by the shadow that follows him. Recalling how Eli had spoken about the Garcias disappearing from the world, Peter fantasizes about killing Eli.

Peter suspects that María has died. Eli tries to console him but reminds him of his responsibilities. Peter ignores him. He reflects on the differences between them. Sally expresses her concern that Peter would not care if she disappeared. Peter is resolved that the McCullough family must end.