Wolfe | Being Ninety:

BY DONALD MACE WILLIAMS 

In this bold adaptation of Beowulf, Donald Mace Williams reimagines the epic tale in the setting of the Old West, transforming it into a powerful meditation on humanity’s encroachment upon the natural world.

This imaginative retelling unfolds on an isolated ranch in late nineteenth-century Texas, where a mysterious and beguiling creature is discovered to have slaughtered cattle—and a laborer. The fate of the town's locals is placed upon an outsider: a calm, confident young man named Billy Wolfe.
 

In the work's second act, Being Ninety, Williams recounts his more than nine decades as a child of the Depression, a poet, journalist, professor, classically trained singer, husband of 62 years, father, and lifelong wanderer. Williams’s life reads like a picaresque novel of Texas and many points farther afield.

Donald Mace Williams is a former writing coach for The Wichita Eagle and reporter and editor for papers that include Newsday, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Amarillo Globe-News. He has taught English and journalism at West Texas State and Baylor Universities. Williams holds a doctorate in English from the University of Texas. He lives in Canyon, Texas, and his poetry has been published widely in journals in the U.S.