When a strange, beguiling creature is found to have slaughtered first the cattle of a lonely ranch in the late nineteenth-century Texas, then one of its laborers, the fate of the locals is placed in the hands of an out-of-towner, a calm and confident young man by the name of Billy Wolfe. In this epic adaptation of Beowulf, Donald Mace Williams recasts the epic poem, setting it in the Old West and turning it into a critique of man's encroachment on nature.

In 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. He forges on through his nineties on the strengths of his love of the prairies and his memories of his loving wife, Nell, and ultimately of his devotion to the writing life.