Shadow Country

From Strand Bookstore

When award-winning author Peter Matthiessen first introduced readers to notorious outlaw E.J. Watson, few could have known that the landscape of the American literary epic had been forever transfigured. Through the Watson trilogy - 'Killing Mister Watson', 'Lost Man's River', & 'Bone By Bone' - cot only was the mysterious Florida frontier shown in a new light, but the mythic saga of Watson's relentless drive and incredible crimes were exposed with unrivaled passion. 'Shadow Country' revisits the author's original vision for the epic, which he has condensed into a stunning single volume. 2008 WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FOR FICTION.

From the Publisher

A richly textured reworking of the author's classic trilogy--Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone--chronicles the legacy of E. J. Watson, a notorious desperado gunned down by his neighbors along the lawless nineteenth-century frontier of the Florida Everglades. 15,000 first printing.

Review

Michael Coffey - Publishers Weekly
"Matthiessen's reworking of three previous novels into one magisterial epic, ostensibly about the setting of the rugged Everglades in the early 1900s, is perhaps our greatest fictional meditation on the American character."

Review

Tom Leclair - New York Times
"With its historical and legendary uncertainties, this...book is a deeper South ABSALOM, ABSALOM!....Matthiessen's presentation of conflicting race, class, clan and personal loyalties is masterly."

Review

Ron Carlson - Los Angeles Times
"In SHADOW COUNTRY Matthiessen revisits his three novels about the career of [E.J.] Watson...and fits them together so that they unfold, layer by layer, mystery by mystery, episode by episode, gathering, gathering, nodding back and forth, in a tangle not unlike the living imbroglio in which the tale is set, the impenetrable jungle wetland of the Florida lowlands. I'll just say right here that the book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go."

More about the book

For over 20 years, Peter Matthiessen (THE SNOW LEOPARD) toiled on his late-career masterpiece, the trilogy of novels recounting the legendary, notorious, glorious, and nasty life of Florida outlaw, murderer, and sugar cane plantation owner Edgar J. Watson. The books--KILLING MISTER WATSON, LOST MAN'S RIVER, and BONE BY BONE--serve as an epic and brilliant investigation of the lawlessness, ambition, ecological plunder, and the racial tensions of Florida's--and American--history. But Matthiessen wasn't done: in 2008 he published SHADOW COUNTRY, a painstakingly edited and refined version of the trilogy, now fused into a single 900 page tome. The first "book" in SHADOW COUNTRY uses a dozen narrators to relate the arc of Watson's life, from celebrated outlaw, to loathed murderer, to his own bloody demise at the hands of a crowd. In its blend of fact, fiction, myth, and surmise, the section explores the nature of reality with the same lush multiplicity of Faulkner's ABSALOM, ABSALOM! In the second "book," two of Watson's sons strive to understand their father's dark legacy. Finally, in the last "book" Watson himself addresses his own life, and many of the mysteries of his youth become revealed. A remarkable work of American fiction and the apotheosis of a lauded literary career, SHADOW COUNTRY won the National Book Award in 2008.