Nominated for the Spinetingler Award for Best Novel of 2011A dark Latino legend of the Southwest's urban badlands, the kid is spoken of in whispers in dive bars near closing time. Some claim to have met him, and others say he doesn't exist--a phantom blamed for every unsolved act of violence, a ghost who haunts every blood-splattered crime scene. In reality, he is young man with a love of cooking and reading, an abiding loneliness, and an appetite for violence. He is a projection of the dreams and nightmares of the people ignored by Phoenix's economic boom and a contemporary outlaw in search of an ordinary life. Love brings him the chance to start anew with Vanjii, a beautiful, but damaged woman, but try as he might to abandon the past, it won't abandon him. Fighting back in the only way he knows sets in motion a tragic sequence of events that leads to an explosive conclusion shocking in both its brutality and tenderness.