Peter Matthiessen

Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic–Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone–was conceived as one vast mysterious novel, but because of its length it was originally broken up into three books. In this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has cut nearly a third of the overall text and collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. In Shadow Country, he has marvelously distilled a monumental work, realizing his original vision.

Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.

Shadow Country traverses strange landscapes and frontier hinterlands inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color, including the black and Indian inheritors of the archaic racism that, as Watson’s wife observed, "still casts its shadow over the nation."
--front flap

Shadow Country

A New Rendering of the Watson Legend

Will Vunderink

Shadow Country is an ambitious, massive American epic set on a little-known frontier with a Faulknerian scope and cast of characters, chief among them the ruthless anti-hero Watson. Cue the rapturous praise from fellow novelists like Richard Ford, Saul Bellow, Don DeLillo, etc.

But Faulkner this is not. This trilogy-in-one-novel is repetitive (particularly in Book One, which recounts one main event from many perspectives) and long-winded (particularly in Book Two). The long Book Three, in which we are finally offered Watson's point of view, compounds these problems and often reads as a half-hearted, somewhat plodding attempt to humanize a ruthless (but misunderstood! really!!) man. Of course it's already abundantly clear that there's more to Watson than his detractors would have you think.

All of which would be fine if the writing were vital and rich. But the prose is straightforward and unexceptional, with only a few glimmers of lyricism and interesting imagery sprinkled throughout. 

Overall, a disappointment.

Melody Izard

Shadow Country is actually three books rewritten and meant to be read together to get the whole story of Edgar J. Watson. He was a real plantation owner, one of the early settlers in the area now known as the Everglades. There are many rumors about his life and his death. This book is the fictionalized account of the myths and truths of the man and his family. 

It’s a damn long book and sometimes I didn’t care if I got the truth. But that was mainly because I was ready to move on to something else. I already knew how and when he was going to get killed because I had already read (although a long time ago) Killing Mister Watson. 

The first part of the trilogy, Killing Mister Watson is his story told from many points of view. From his daughter, his neighbors, his relatives. It’s an account of what they knew or what they thought they knew about what E.J. Watson did or did not do, about who he was and who he killed; about his good qualities and about his bad. The second book tells how one of his sons sets out to find out the truth about his father. He seeks out some of these same eye witnesses to get a retelling of his father’s story with hopes of learning something new; something that will show that his father was a good man and not a killer.

Book III is Edgar’s story. He fills in details others left out. He confirms and denies. He admits and he confesses. He justifies and he excuses. He is just as dead at the end.

You get the story of the taming or raping of south Florida. You see the beautiful wildlife hunted and shot just for sport or to ironically satisfy America’s love of beauty. You see justification of the powerful “land owner” doing whatever he has to do to get people to do dangerous, hard, labor for little or no pay. You see politicians playing their games to advance themselves or someone they consider an equal or an asset to their climb. An epic, that’s what it is. Nothing is really answered. You just get a good hard look at his story and the story of this time in our American History. And at the end of each account Mister Watson still is full of bullets.

Inspired by a near-mythic event of the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century, Shadow Country reimagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself to his own violent end at the hands of his neighbours. His son Lucius investigates the killing which has come to obsess him. In this bold new rendering of the Watson trilogy Matthiessen has deepened the insights and motivations of his characters, consolidating his fictional masterwork into a poetic, compelling novel of a monumental scope and ambition, with breathtaking accomplishment.

Shadow Country

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