William Bonney a.k.a. "Billy the Kid, " killed his first man when he was twelve. By the time he was twenty-one he had, by his own reckoning, slain 19 more. In the intervening years he had become "Billy the Kid, " bloodthirsty ogre and outlaw saint. Michael Ondaatje traces Billy's passage across the blasted landscape of 1880 New Mexico and the collective unconscious of his country.