Appalachian literature crosses with the larger genre of Southern literature. Internationally renowned writers such as William Faulkner and Cormac McCarthy have made notable contributions to the American canon with tales set within Appalachia. McCarthy's "Suttree" (1979) is an intense vision of the squalidness and brutality of life along the Tennessee River, in the heart of Appalachia. Other McCarthy novels set in Appalachia include "The Orchard Keeper" (1968) and "Child of God" (1973). Appalachia also serves as the origin point for the kid, the protagonist of McCarthy's Western masterpiece "Blood Meridian". Faulkner's hometown of Oxford, Mississippi, is on the borderlands of what is considered Appalachia, but his fictional Yoknapatawpha should be considered part of the region. Almost all of the fiction which earned him the Nobel Prize is set there, including "Light in August" and "Absalom, Absalom".