Catherine's Son: The Story of a Boy Who Became an Outlaw

Before the world knew Henry McCarty as Billy the Kid, he was a quick-witted and industrious boy living with his mother in the New Mexico Territory. Under his mother’s loving guidance, he seemed destined for a conventional life as a law-abiding and well-respected man, a man who would make any mother proud. Fate intervened, however, and young Henry turned to the wrong side of the law, becoming one of history’s most notorious outlaws. By the time of his death at age twenty-one, he was known throughout the world as a murderer and thief — the “devil’s meat,” as one newspaper described him. Catherine’s Son is a work of historical fiction that tells the story of how Henry McCarty became Billy the Kid, a young outlaw portrayed by the press as the “terror and disgrace” of the New Mexico Territory.