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Cities of the Plain (Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition)

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Cities of the Plain, set in the early 1950's around El Paso, Texas, and across the border in Juarez, Mexico, brings together the protagonists of the first two novels of The Border Trilogy. Billy Parham, now in his thirties, and John Grady Cole, now nineteen, both find themselves working on a ranch in the Tularosa Basin, an area threatened by U.S. government appropriation for military purposes. “Anyway this country aint the same,” Billy tells John Grady. “The war changed everthing. I don’t think people even know it yet.”

The central action revolves around...

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