Outer Dark

Outer Dark is the second novel by American writer Cormac McCarthy, published in 1968. The time and setting are nebulous, but can be assumed to be somewhere in Appalachia, sometime around the turn of the twentieth century. The novel tells of a woman named Rinthy who bears her brother's baby. The brother, Culla, leaves the nameless infant in the woods to die, but tells his sister that the newborn died of natural causes and had to be buried. Rinthy discovers this lie and sets out to find the baby for herself. The name of the novel is derived from the Gospel of Matthew, i.e. the meeting between the Roman centurion and Jesus, during which Jesus says: "But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth".