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The Kid Audiobook
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Publisher Description
A 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.
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“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.
— New York Times Book Review
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“An engrossing read…[that] comes alive thanks to a blend of history, remembrances, and the author’s knack for imagined conversations.”
— Albuquerque Journal -
“The Kid has become ‘to a great degree each person’s wild invention.’ This is Hansen’s version—a wisecracking daredevil.”
— Seattle Times -
“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.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) -
“The author’s depth of research and love of the genre shine through.”
— Highbrow Magazine -
“A haunting biograophical novel about Billy the Kid and the people responsible for creating the myth.”
— Shelf Awareness -
“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.’”
— Kirkus Reviews -
“A rich tapestry [and] evenhanded literary portrait.”
— Library Journal -
“Hansen’s is a truly wondrous talent, and The Kid is a truly wondrous book.”
— Tom McNeal, author of To Be Sung Underwater -
“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.”
— Paul Mariani, author of The Whole Harmonium: The Life of Wallace Stevens
Awards
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A New York Times Pick for Paperback Row
The Kid Listener Reviews
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About Ron Hansen
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.
About Mark Bramhall
Arthur Morey has won three AudioFile Magazine “Best Of” Awards, and his work has garnered numerous AudioFile Earphones Awards and placed him as a finalist for two Audie Awards. He has acted in a number of productions, both off Broadway in New York and off Loop in Chicago. He graduated from Harvard and did graduate work at the University of Chicago. He has won awards for his fiction and drama, worked as an editor with several book publishers, and taught literature and writing at Northwestern University. His plays and songs have been produced in New York, Chicago, and Milan, where he has also performed.