The Collected Works of Billy the KidThe Collected Works of Billy the Kid

William Bonney a.k.a. "Billy the Kid," killed his first man when he was twelve. By the time he was twenty-one he had, by his own reckoning, slain 19 more. In the intervening years he had become "Billy the Kid," bloodthirsty ogre and outlaw saint. Drawing on contemporary accounts, period photographs, dime novels, and his own prodigious fund of empathy and imagination, Michael Odaatje's visionary novel traces the legendary outlaw's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country. The Collected Works of Billy the Kid is a virtuoso synthesis of storytelling, history, and myth by a writer who brings us back to our familiar legends with a renewed sense of wonder.