The third book of Cormac McCarthy's border trilogy, Cities of the Plain brings together John Grady Cole from All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham from The Crossing in an evocation of the dying cowboy way of life. Set in far west Texas, the Sodom and Gamorrah here is Ciudad Juarez, a town where the cowboys go to get drunk and to get laid. The books is more descriptive than narrative, overlaid with a sense of loss and of sadness. In west Texas of 1952, the cowboy way of life is almost completely dead. Those days are dead and gone, and yet the boys try to live on and make the best of it they can. But events are set in motion for tragedy when John Grady falls in love with the whore Magdalena. John Grady becomes a Christ figure who tries to redeem his little part of the world. And the epilogue stands all story telling traditions on their heads.
Author: McCarthy, Cormac
Published: 1998
Length: 8hr 46min
Narrator: Adams, Alexander
