Billy and Lord Byron is a coming-of-age story, or Bildungsroman, focusing on the development of an eighteen-year-old boy, Billy, from youth to adulthood, through the care and healing of an injured crow he discovers while at his summer job digging ditches. Billy's personal growth and mental cultivation center on the knowledge he gains by researching this species of bird as he thoughtfully and playfully nurses the crow back to health and eventual reentry into the wild. It addresses issues of self-development as he prepares to go off to college and portends the author's cultivation of a life-long study of ornithology.

Billy and Lord Byron is a coming-of-age story, or Bildungsroman, focusing on the development of an eighteen-year-old boy, Billy, from youth to adulthood, through the care and healing of an injured crow he discovers while at his summer job digging ditches. Billy's personal growth and mental cultivation center on the knowledge he gains by researching this species of bird as he thoughtfully and playfully nurses the crow back to health and eventual reentry into the wild. It addresses issues of self-development as he prepares to go off to college and portends the author's cultivation of a life-long study of ornithology.