The book details the grueling journey of a father and his young son over several months across a landscape blasted by an unspecified cataclysm that has destroyed industrial civilization and nearly all life.

Realizing they cannot survive the winter in northern latitudes, the father takes the boy south along county roads towards the sea, carrying their meager possessions in their knapsacks and a supermarket cart.

Farther along the road, they evade a group whose members include pregnant women, and soon after, they discover an abandoned campsite with a newborn infant roasted on a spit.

They soon run out of supplies and begin to starve before finding a house containing more food to carry in their cart, but the man's condition worsens.

In an interview with Oprah Winfrey, McCarthy said that the inspiration for the book came during a 2003 visit to El Paso, Texas with his young son.

Imagining what the city might look like fifty to a hundred years into the future, he pictured "fires on the hill" and thought about his son.

Then the novel came to him quickly, taking only six weeks to write, and he dedicated it to his son, John Francis McCarthy.

[9] In an interview with John Jurgensen of The Wall Street Journal, McCarthy described conversations he and his brother had about different scenarios for an apocalypse.

[12][13][14] Metacritic reported the book had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on thirty-one reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".

[18] In the November/December 2006 issue of Bookmarks, the book received 4.5 out of 5 stars based on critic reviews, with the critical summary saying, "Only the Houston Chronicle faulted McCarthy for failing to deliver a clear message, but even its reviewer conceded that McCarthy 'nevertheless remains one of our great storytellers, a master of suspense and narrative power'".

[19] In Literary Review, Sebastian Shakespeare wrote: "McCarthy transforms what could have been a ludicrous story into a tense psychological drama about a man living on the edge of sanity.

"[21] Entertainment Weekly in June 2008 named The Road the best book, fiction or non-fiction, of the past 25 years.

[22] Later the magazine put it on its end-of-the-decade "best-of" list, saying, "With its spare prose, McCarthy's post-apocalyptic odyssey from 2006 managed to be both harrowing and heartbreaking.

[34] A film adaptation of the novel, directed by John Hillcoat and written by Joe Penhall, opened in theaters on November 25, 2009.

In March 2024, the Franco-Belgian publisher Dargaud released a graphic novel adaptation of The Road illustrated by Manu Larcenet that was well received by the public.