All The Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy-- Hands down and by all odds!!!

When I was about ten, and my favorite author was probably Will James, my mother's favorite uncle gave me 'The Last Of The Mohicans' by James Fenimore Cooper. I spent the next thirty years trying to read that book, and never made it past the first chapter. I'd still be trying, but my mother passed on in 1956 and I no longer felt the desperate compulsion to read it out of respect to my elders.

Spud