Cormac McCarthy has always been touched with a sort of genius, but it wasn't until his sixth novel, All The Pretty Horses, that he finally became a household name. Everybody loves a Western, and McCarthy's tale of lost innocence and impending doom across the Mexican border ranks with the best of them. But McCarthy had a difficult time recapturing the spirit of that magical novel with the second book of his so-called Border Trilogy, The Crossing. To complete the trilogy on a high note, McCarthy took the protagonists from the two previous novels, John Grady Cole and Billy Parham, respectively, and placed them in the employ of a New Mexico ranch. From the start, Cities Of The Plain abandons some of the loneliness and desperation of McCarthy's earlier works in favor of a far more domestic tale, albeit one cast with the same sense of imminent doom. Cole and Parham enjoy a fine life training horses and hunting packs of wild dogs, but the former's wanderlust once again draws him into Mexico, where he falls in love with a young, mysterious Mexican prostitute. Intent on spiriting her back to America and marrying her, Cole's plan backfires horribly; instead, he and Parham end up back in Mexico, where they must once again tempt the violent fate long ago prescribed to them. No one writes about the Southwest like Cormac McCarthy, and rarely is the region made out to be so cold and dark. McCarthy's novels are the kind that feature philosophical pimps, prescient blind musicians, and shoeshine boys wise beyond their years, all waiting like mystical oracles for curious visitors to ask questions of them in the taciturn and truncated cadences of cowboy-speak. Though Cities Of The Plain takes place in 1952, the book, like the others in the Border Trilogy, could just as easily have been set in the 19th century, so clearly do the lives of McCarthy's characters reflect an America that no longer exists.