Cities of the Plain is the story of Billy and John Grady, two cowboys working in El Paso in the 1950s. Drought and famine have reduced the profitability of ranches, and the government threatens to exercise eminent domain and seize the ranch where the two men work. Their profitless existence only grows worse when Grady's lover, an epileptic woman named Magdalena, is murdered by her pimp. Grady and the pimp themselves fight to the death and Billy is left alone, drifting into homelessness but eventually reconstructing his life.