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 both got him into and out of trouble and 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. In THE KID, Ron Hansen breathes life into history, bringing readers back into Billy’s boyhood as a ranch hand just trying to wrest a fortune from an unforgiving landscape.