The Saga Of Billy The Kid

"The Saga of Billy the Kid" is a biographical novel that immortalizes the legendary outlaw, portraying him as a boyish hero caught in the violent conflict between rival gangs in New Mexico. In this novel, Burns delves into the life of Billy the Kid, depicting him as a symbol of the vanishing frontier and the clash between lawlessness and civilization. With a foreword by Richard W. Etulain highlighting its historical significance, this gripping account sheds light on the iconic figure and the turbulent era that shaped him.

Author, Gale Cooper's Billy and Paulita: The Saga of Billy the Kid, Paulita Maxwell, and the Santa Fe Ring, in hardcover and paperback, 658 pages, is a literary milestone, using research of 40,000 pages of archival documents and books, analysis of the historic sites, and expert consultants to bring to life the tragedy of Billy Bonney's star-crossed romance with the young, land grant heiress, Paulita Maxwell, and the lost Lincoln County War freedom fight against the deadly Santa Fe Ring; which branded him the outlaw "Billy the Kid," and killed him as the last of its adversaries.

"This might be the best Billy the Kid book to date." —Fritz Thompson, Albuquerque Journal In this revisionist biography, award-winning historian Michael Wallis re-creates the rich anecdotal saga of Billy the Kid (1859–1881), a young man who became a legend in his time and remains an enigma to this day. In an extraordinary evocation of the legendary Old West, Wallis demonstrates why the Kid has remained one of our most popular folk heroes. Filled with dozens of rare images and period photographs, Billy the Kid separates myth from reality and presents an unforgettable portrait of this brief and violent life.

"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. But the whole story of his short, epically violent life has never been told as it has been here"--]cProvided by publisher.

First published in 1926, this entertaining and dramatic biography forever installed outlaw Billy the Kid in the pantheon of mythic heroes from the Old West and is still considered the single most influential portrait of Billy in this century. Saga focuses on the Kid's life and experiences in the bloody war between the Murphy-Dolan and Tunstall-McSween gangs in and around Lincoln, New Mexico, between 1878 and 1881. Burns paints the Kid as a boyish Robin Hood or romantic knight galvanized into a life of crime and killing by the war's violence and bloodshed. Billy represented the romantic and anarchic Old West that the march of civilization was rapidly displacing. His destroyer was Pat Garrett, the courageous sheriff of Lincoln County. Garrett's shooting of Billy in 1881 hastened the closing of the American frontier. Walter Noble Burns's Saga of Billy the Kid kindled a fascination in Billy the Kid that survives to this day. Richard W. Etulain's foreword discusses the singular importance of Saga in the historical literature on Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War.

Examines the career of the young outlaw whose life and death were an expression of the violence prevalent on the American frontier.