Cities of the Plain (the Uncorrected proof) by McCarthy, Cormac - 1998

New York: Alfred a Knopf, 1998. First Edition. Octavo. 289 pages. Uncorrected proof. Stapled in to his literary agent, on the letterhead of William T. Loverd is the note: Cormac, with enormous pleasure, accompanied by Knopf materials showing the sample dust jacket and review of the previous works of the trilogy. In the concluding volume of the Border Trilogy (following All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing we meet John Grady Cole of All the Pretty Horses and Billy Parham of The Crossing, both now working as cowboys on a ranch that will very soon be taken over by the U.S. Army and tamed forever. One night the young men and their fellow workers cross the border to spend a fateful evening at a Juarez whorehouse. There John Grady meets a beautiful, vulnerable sixteen-year-old Mexican girl, Magdalena, held in virtual slavery by her sinister pimp and lover, Eduardo. John Grady determines to spirit her away from Eduardo and back to the United States with him, and enlists the help of the sympathetic but doubtful Billy. The story of their quest and its bloody outcome, brilliantly depicted by a writer who has proved himself one of the great prose stylists of our time, makes for a resonant fable of past and present, of wilderness and civilization, of cruelty and honor. Bound in yellow printed wraps. A fine copy.