Cities of the Plain was published by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, on 19 May 1998. The final volume of the Border Trilogy brings together the protagonists of the first two novels: John Grady Cole (from All the Pretty Horses) and Billy Parham (from The Crossing) are now cowboys working together on Mac McGovern’s ranch near El Paso, Texas, in 1952. The ranch — and the way of life it represents — is about to be seized by the federal government for the White Sands Missile Range. The old world is ending, and nothing McCarthy’s cowboys can do will stop it.
The Novel
At its centre is John Grady’s doomed love for Magdalena, a young epileptic prostitute in a Juárez brothel controlled by the pimp Eduardo. John Grady’s plan to marry her and bring her across the border recapitulates the pattern of his Mexican adventure in All the Pretty Horses: the romantic quest, the collision with implacable social forces, the catastrophe. Eduardo will not release Magdalena. John Grady cannot accept this. The confrontation, when it comes, is one of McCarthy’s most visceral set pieces — a knife fight described with the ritual precision of a bullfight.
Billy Parham serves as the novel’s moral consciousness — older, wiser, haunted by his own losses, unable to prevent his friend from walking into destruction. The novel’s emotional core is the friendship between the two men: tender, inarticulate, expressed through shared work and shared silence rather than speech.
The epilogue — set in 2002, with an elderly Billy Parham living as a homeless drifter — is one of McCarthy’s most extraordinary passages. A stranger tells Billy a dream, and the two men engage in a philosophical dialogue that circles back to the central questions of the entire trilogy: what stories mean, what the world is, and whether any of it can be redeemed.
Themes and Literary Significance
Cities of the Plain is the most conventional of the three trilogy novels — shorter, more focused, more directly plotted. This has led some critics to regard it as the weakest of the three, but the novel’s power lies precisely in its simplicity. McCarthy strips the narrative to its essentials — love, loyalty, violence, loss — and allows the accumulated weight of the two preceding novels to give these familiar elements a devastating force.
The title refers to Sodom and Gomorrah — the cities of the plain destroyed by God for their wickedness. Juárez, with its brothels and violence, is the modern city of the plain; the ranch, with its work and fellowship, is the alternative that history is destroying. McCarthy does not moralise; he simply places these two worlds side by side and lets the reader feel their incompatibility.
Publication History
First edition (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1998). Cloth-covered boards with dust jacket.
Identification points:
- “First Edition” stated on copyright page
- Knopf Borzoi colophon
- Full number line including “1”
- Dust jacket with desert/ranch imagery
Is Cities of the Plain a Good Investment? Collecting and Market Values
Cities of the Plain completes the Border Trilogy and is collected both individually and as part of the trilogy set.
First edition, first printing (1998, Knopf):
- Fine/Fine in dust jacket: $100–$300
- Near Fine in jacket: $60–$150
- Signed first edition: $800–$2,000
- Border Trilogy signed matched set (all three): $5,000–$10,000
Value trajectory (2016–2026): Approximately 4.8x appreciation for signed copies.
Projected values (2026–2036): Moderate appreciation expected individually. The novel’s primary collector value lies in its role completing the trilogy — signed matched sets will appreciate most strongly.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read the first two volumes? The novel works as a standalone narrative, but the full emotional impact depends on knowing John Grady’s history from All the Pretty Horses and Billy’s from The Crossing. The epilogue, in particular, gains immeasurably from the accumulated weight of the trilogy.
Is the epilogue part of the novel? It is set fifty years after the main narrative and follows an elderly Billy Parham in a different register from the rest of the novel. Many readers regard it as the philosophical culmination of the entire trilogy — McCarthy’s final statement on the relationship between stories and the world.
Why is this shorter than the other two? McCarthy appears to have intended a lean, classical tragedy after the expansive philosophising of The Crossing. The restraint is deliberate and effective — the novel moves with the inevitability of Greek tragedy toward its predetermined end.