Overview

A haunting reimagining of Billy the Kid—myth, violence, and regret collide in a lyrical coming-of-age story woven with history, legend, and the omnipresence of birds. Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him: The Lives of Billy the Kid by Pamela Ryder is a coming-of-age saga like no other. It reaches beyond the myth of the reckless and romantic rebel, the murdering gunslinger, and the scrappy outlaw. His story is one of survival, mayhem, and regret. Billy is portrayed as a complex and authentic figure. At times he is ruthless, often sympathetic, always clever and engaging. Yet he remains haunted by loneliness as he rides ever closer to the end of his short and violent life. The child of Irish immigrants, Billy came of age amid hardship and lawlessness, forced to navigate a world that offered him little mercy. From his grim childhood in the tenements of New York to the unforgiving deserts of New Mexico, his journey is marked by loss, chaos, and fleeting moments of grace. He was a boy who became an outlaw, forever running from his past toward an inevitable fate. Told through shifting perspectives and enriched by Billy's keen observations of birds, landscapes, and the lives he has taken, the novel unfolds in lyrical, unflinching prose. His fascination with birds, whose freedom stands in stark contrast to his own doomed flight, threads through the narrative. A meditation on myth, mortality, and the stories we tell about ourselves, Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him is a singular reimagining of the American West. It does not flinch from the blood or the beauty of a life lived on the edge of history.

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9781573662154

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Reviews

""An exquisitely crafted tapestry of a gone America, a beautifully rendered novel from a masterful storyteller, an enduring testament to the power of the sentence, and an absolute pleasure to read. Nobody writes like Pamela Ryder."" --Donald Breckenridge, author of more than a dozen plays, a novella, and the novels 6/2/95, You Are Here, and This Young Girl Passing ""Land-a-mercy, that scamp Billy the Kid was a hard-thinking scoundrel back in his untamed day, but scribbler Ryder--she's a terror of beautification in this era of timified politicized pop gunning shootouts among the publicists of publishers of card-flaring ID. Zane Grey's a goner, but Ryder's with us--and with you--for everlasting good."" --Gordon Lish, author of many novels, story collections, and anthologies, including most recently, Annals and Indices ""I'm staggered by the depths of Ryder's Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him, as though watching a galaxy form from a distance, but also close enough to be rubbed raw. . . . It's a monumental book that astonished me by its language, vision, and complexity. It's a monumental book."" --Joanna Ruocco, author of Dan

""An exquisitely crafted tapestry of a gone America, a beautifully rendered novel from a masterful storyteller, an enduring testament to the power of the sentence, and an absolute pleasure to read. Nobody writes like Pamela Ryder."" --Donald Breckenridge, author of more than a dozen plays, a novella, and the novels 6/2/95, You Are Here, and This Young Girl Passing ""Land-a-mercy, that scamp Billy the Kid was a hard-thinking scoundrel back in his untamed day, but scribbler Ryder--she's a terror of beautification in this era of timified politicized pop gunning shootouts among the publicists of publishers of card-flaring ID. Zane Grey's a goner, but Ryder's with us--and with you--for everlasting good."" --Gordon Lish, author of many novels, story collections, and anthologies, including most recently, Annals and Indices ""I'm staggered by the depths of Ryder's Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him, as though watching a galaxy form from a distance, but also close enough to be rubbed raw. . . . It's a monumental book that astonished me by its language, vision, and complexity. It's a monumental book."" --Joanna Ruocco, author of Dan

Author Information

Pamela Ryder is author of the short story collection, A Tendency to Be Gone and two novels-in-stories: Correction of Drift and Paradise Field. Her work has been published in many literary journals, among them Bellevue Literary Review, Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Unsaid, Propagule, Black Warrior Review, Tyrant, Jewish Fiction.net, and Conjunctions.

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