Billy/Will is a fully realized character, caught up in a confusing conflict of loyalties and at the mercy of adults and their seemingly unreasonable demands. In spite of a rather implausible beginning, this fine coming-of-age story recalls Hinton's Tex or Crutcher's early novels. School is no better until he meets Diana, who understands his need to talk to a friend, and he begins to come to terms with his life. Will, as his stepfather insists he be called, can't adjust and can't seem to please Dave. Convinced by his dad that his family didn't want him or they would have tracked him down, Billy is furious when his stepfather, Dave, takes him back to Iowa without letting him say goodbye to his dad, his friends, or his girlfriend. Sixteen-year-old Billy's easygoing life in a small New Mexico town is disrupted when he's arrested for brawling and a routine fingerprint check reveals that he's a missing child, kidnapped at age ten by his father. "This fine coming-of-age story recalls Hinton's Tex or Crutcher's earlier novels - a good story with real depth." His gradual success in integrating his two vastly dissimilar lives makes a fine story. The novel begins when his adoptive father finds him six years later and forces him to return to his former life, and Billy is once again torn between the two families. Kidnapped by his birth father, ten-year-old, suburban William Campbell became Billy Melendez, with a dramatically different life on the rodeo circuit. Also captured are the ethnic, regional, and class identities at play as Billy Melendez moves into Billy Campbell's world, where boots aren't in and Spanish-speaking families are recent arrivals." ( Booklist, ALA) The narrative structure, with frequent flashbacks to the kidnapping, mirrors Billy's journey toward a recognition of both households' complexities. Forced to leave his kidnapper (his biological father) and return to his Iowa family, Billy struggles with his feelings as well as with a new school and neighborhood.
When he's fingerprinted after an arrest for fighting in a bar, the prints tell what Billy wants to forget-that he's really William James Campbell, abducted from an Iowa Little League game six years earlier. Sixteen-year-old Billy Melendez knows who he is-a rural New Mexico cowboy-in-training and a high-school brawler.
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