The Heart of a Legend
Amy Lignor
Reviewed by Jenny Salyers
When
Paulita Maxwell started her journey from Texas into the wild
New
Mexico Territory in 1877, with
her brother Pete, her thoughts were on nothing more than being reunited
with
her family in Fort Sumner. While
crossing New
Mexico
to get to
their home, Paulita and Pete were attacked by a lone angry Indian. Help
came in
the form of a bullet shot by one William H. Bonney, the man who world
soon be
known to the rest of the world as outlaw “Billy the Kid”. Billy’s heroic actions, in saving the Maxwell
siblings, are the start of a friendship between him and both Paulita
and her
brother.
As
politics in Lincoln County spiral into an all out land war, Paulita
finds her
life becoming more and more intertwined with Billy’s She is helplessly
in love
with the outlaw Billy has become; she believes he is nothing more than
the
scapegoat..
Paulita is faced with the heartbreak her love will cause her family, as
her
brother has cast aside his friendship with Billy due to Billy’s
criminal
behavior. We witness Paulita grow from a young teen fresh out of
finishing
school into a strong woman in love and wife to an outlaw.
Billy
the Kid is one of the Wild West’s legendary outlaws whose life is still
hotly
debated about in modern times. His past is shrouded in mystery; and
people
still do not know for sure why he never left New Mexico for any long
periods of time. Author Amy Lignor has taken the history of Paulita
Maxwell, a
woman who was named as Billy’s girl in newspapers of the time, and
written a
story that gives a reason for some of Billy’s actions.
I
was excited to receive this book; as the wild-west, full of legendary
figures,
is a time of American history that I have loved since small. I didn’t
think I
knew much about Billy the Kid, and was pleasantly surprised at what I
found I
did know while reading the book. It was easy to see the amount of
research that
went into this tale even before the extremely helpful afterword
provided by the
author. Her story includes many of the real men who were involved in
the
Lincoln County Wars, making this part of history step alive off the
pages. The
Heart of a Legend is a strong first novel; that shows readers a bit of
history
that has been glossed over due to the legendary status achieved by
Billy the
Kid and the Lincoln County land wars.