I Am Billy the Kid
with Michael Blouin
Hosted by Stuart Ross Podcast Fiction
Reading Blouin’s virtuoso performance is inspiring, clearly brilliant, but also a little disturbing because you start to wonder how some people get to be so darn gifted. … Blouin is the type of author who gets rave reviews because he is talented, a risk-taker, and so unlike anyone else you have ever read.
Author and editor Stuart Ross sits down with ReLit Award Winner Michael Blouin to talk about his new novel, I Am Billy the Kid, which imagines the life of the infamous gun fighter after he fakes his own death and heads to Canada in the company of his older brother Joseph.
History tells us that the short and violent life of William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid, ended at the hand of Pat Garrett on the moonless night of July 14, 1881. But I Am Billy the Kid tells a different story, straight from Billy himself.
This revisionist history seen through the lens of a twenty-first century sensibility features the picaresque hero we thought we knew and the unexpected one that we don't; a fearless and determined young woman who is in no mood to be saved and would much prefer exacting her own revenge.
Billy has been in an alcoholic haze since a failed attempt to escape notoriety by faking his own death. By 1915, his fame has only increased, and when word of a possible ruse leaks out, Billy finds himself once again on the run.
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