In this magnificent new novel, the National Book Award-winning author of All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing fashions a darkly beautiful elegy for the American frontier.  

The setting is New Mexico in 1952, where John Grady Cole and Billy Parham are working as ranch hands. To the North lie the proving grounds of Alamogordo; to the South, the twin cities of El Paso and Juarez, Mexico. Their life is made up of trail drives and horse auctions and stories told by campfire light. It is a life that is about to change forever, and John Grady and Billy both know it.

The catalyst for that change appears in the form of a beautiful, ill-starred Mexican prostitute.  When John Grady falls in love, Billy agrees--against his better judgment--to help him rescue the girl from her suavely brutal pimp. The ensuing events resonate with the violence and inevitability of classic tragedy.   Hauntingly beautiful, filled with sorrow, humor and awe, Cities of the Plain is a genuine American epic.

科馬剋-麥卡锡，生於1933年，50年代初在田納西大學研習文學，60年代起專門從事文學、特彆是小說的創作，1985年以《血色的子午綫》一書嶄露頭角。90年先後齣版瞭"邊境三部麯"的《駿馬》、《穿越》、《平原上的城市》，奠定瞭他作為當代美國西部文學大師的地位，被譽為"當代在世的最偉大的美國作傢之一"。