The style creates an otherworldly atmosphere that persists even when the author is describing the most mundane activities in the greatest of detail. The epilogue seems to shed new light on the destiny of man and could stand alone as a great work of literature, like the Grand Inquisitor scene from the Brothers Karamazov. As you get caught up in the narrative, what first seemed like weaknesses become strengths. Sometimes the author proceeds very slowly, providing lots of painstaking detail about dealing with horses and cattle, about healing people and animals, about fixing things. Step by ponderous step, he tells you everything you'd need to know to do it yourself.
Some passages read like a handbook for the modern cowboy.
But miraculously, the tedious detail helps provide a concrete and very credible background for the occasional flights of allegory and metaphysical insight. The flat, ungarnished presentation of the facts is just the starting point for the tales that others will tell. For instance in The Crossing , Billy Parham, a young boy from Texas, who was caught up in a series of dangerous circumstances in the wild wilderness of Mexico and is now returning to try to find his brother, hears a ballad and immediately recognizes that it is about his brother. The ballad is the first evidence he has that his brother was killed and how it happened. But later he learns that this same song has existed for generations.