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Start giftingThe Kid
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Learn moreA new novel from Ron Hansen, the award-winning author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, about an iconic American criminal of the old West: legendary outlaw, Billy the Kid.
Born Henry McCarty, Billy the Kid was a diminutive, charming, blond-haired young man who, growing up in New York, Kansas, and later New Mexico, demonstrated a precocious dexterity at firing six-shooters with either hand—a skill that turned him into an American legend of the old West. He was smart, well-spoken, attractive to both white and Mexican women, a good dancer, and a man with a nose for money, horses, and trouble. His spree of crimes and murders has been immortalized in dime westerns, novels, and movies. But the whole story of his short, epically violent life has never been told as it has been here.
In The Kid, Ron Hansen showcases his masterful research and inimitable style as he breathes life into history, bringing listeners back into the late 1800s and into Billy’s boyhood as a ranch hand just trying to wrest a fortune from an unforgiving landscape. We are with Billy in every gunfight and horse theft, and we get to know him in full before his grand death in a hail of bullets in 1881 at the age of twenty-one.
Original, powerful, and swiftly told, The Kid is an unforgettable listen about a uniquely American antihero.
Ron Hansen is the author of many novels—including Mariette in Ecstasy, Desperadoes, and A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion—and two short-story collections, among them She Loves Me Not. His novel The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He graduated from Creighton University in Omaha and went on to the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop where he studied with John Irving. He is now Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ Professor in Arts and Humanities at Santa Clara University in northern California.
Mark Bramhall has won the prestigious Audie Award for best narration, more than thirty AudioFile Earphones Awards, and has repeatedly been named by AudioFile magazine and Publishers Weekly among their “Best Voices of the Year.” He is also an award-winning actor whose acting credits include off-Broadway, regional, and many Los Angeles venues as well as television, animation, and feature films. He has taught and directed at the American Academy of Dramatic Art.
Reviews
“Hansen has an abiding interest in the tension between a historical figure’s publicized persona and the private, unadorned self…A skilled researcher, Hansen anchors his book in the dark waters of character. The Kid’s story has been told many times. But not like this…The real achievement of this novel is its pesky style. Like the Kid, Hansen revels in the lingo of tabloid and tale, of dime novel and detective story…The West has always been a vortex of transformation. Only the Kid remains forever young and misunderstood.
“An engrossing read…[that] comes alive thanks to a blend of history, remembrances, and the author’s knack for imagined conversations.”
“The Kid has become ‘to a great degree each person’s wild invention.’ This is Hansen’s version—a wisecracking daredevil.”
“Entertaining and lively, a portrayal of swift and deadly frontier justice…Hansen’s colorful description of the New Mexico Territory as a lawless land of lying politicians and thieving businessmen is historically accurate, resulting in an excellent, transportive read.”
“The author’s depth of research and love of the genre shine through.”
“A haunting biograophical novel about Billy the Kid and the people responsible for creating the myth.”
“The novel’s strength is its understanding of the fluidity of authority in ‘a West where judgments of legality go to the highest bidder or at the insistence of a gun.’”
“A rich tapestry [and] evenhanded literary portrait.”
“Hansen’s is a truly wondrous talent, and The Kid is a truly wondrous book.”
“Stunning…Creates a time and a place and a young man, half killer, half kid, who even in his lifetime earned the status of a myth. Mesmerizing.”
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