The Stone Garden: The Epic Life of Billy the Kid

by Bill Brooks

Book Overview

The White Sands Region, New Mexico, 1908. It is twenty-seven years after the alleged death of Billy the Kid and rumors abound throughout New Mexico and the United States that the Kid is still alive.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812570057
• ISBN13: 9780812570052
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Forge
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 4.1" x 6.9"

Customer Reviews

Billy Brooks is right with Billy the Kid

Excellent book especially in light of new facts re: Billy the Kid and his 'death'. Bill Brooks is an exceptional author and you can't go wrong with any of his books..especially the Westerns. jm

A Contemporary Classic

Brooks'new novel is a poetic tour de force, a literary exploration of the old west as only the most playful and -- simultaneously -- the most poignant imagination could bring to it. I was captured from the first sentences: a dead Billy the Kid -- or perhaps not-dead Billy the Kid -- denies all, recalls all. This is not your father's Western. It has little likeness to the traditional genre, but it has everything to do with contemporary literature, that kind of delightful exploration of truth which is always multiple and never quite certain of itself. Brooks is able to make Billy the Kid a vulnerable, wistful poet of sorts, one who reads Shakespeare and Voltaire, and who kills villains only when forced to. This Billy the Kid is sometimes lonely, sometimes stupid, sometimes conflicted, but always full of a wistful reflection on the human condition, and always full of sad dreams, "like a bird whose wings are boken," as Brooks puts it. In the end, a dying Billy recognizes in his journal that "All the words in the world cannot tell the true story of even a single life." The only problem with this novel was that it had to end.