Shadow Country Trilogy

When Peter Matthiessen was 17, he was told the story of Edgar J. Watson, a popular and successful planter who had been murdered by his neighbors in 1910. This novel is Matthiessen's attempt to piece together the life of a mysterious man who became a legend, and the dangerous legend that destroyed him. During the Reconstruction Era, Edgar Watson grew up in the South at the mercy of a brutal alcoholic father and a vindictive mother. Witnessing the horrors of slavery, bilked out of his inheritance, and blamed in his youth for a murder he didn't commit, E.J. developed a reputation for violence that preceded him everywhere he went. Finally, it brought him to a tragic and bloody end as his family watched in helpless horror. Borrowing an old local tale about a man who was killed by his neighbors, Matthiessen creates a powerful character. George Guidall's excellent reading brings this moving tragedy home to us with a passion.

Critically-acclaimed novelist and naturalist Peter Matthiessen deftly weaves together the fortunes and tragedies of Florida Everglades folk in this foreboding thriller. Haunted by the legacy of his father's violent reputation and brutal death, historian Lucius Watson seeks to understand the man behind the legend. In 1910, an enraged mob of neighbors gunned down murder suspect E.J. Watson-each claiming it was self-defense. Over four decades later, his son Lucius returns to Lost Man's River to discover the truth behind that horrible day. Was his father really a cold-blooded murderer, feared by all? Or was he a man of progress and vision, killed by those who envied him? Alternately threatened and shunned, Lucius relentlessly digs for answers, even while he fears the truth. In this dazzling sequel to Killing Mr. Watson, Peter Matthiessen presents the story of a family riddled with scandal through colorful recollections of renegades and their descendants. Veteran narrator George Guidall brings the rich oral history dramatically to life.

One of a very few National Book Award honorees to be nominated for fiction and nonfiction, Peter Matthiessen creates a curious blend of both in this tragic prequel to Killing Mister Watson and Lost Man's River. An amazing novel in its own right, Bone by Bone caps the trilogy featuring the enigmatic E.J. Watson. During the Reconstruction Era, Edgar Watson grew up in the South at the mercy of a brutal alcoholic father and a vindictive mother. Witnessing the horrors of slavery, bilked out of his inheritance, and blamed in his youth for a murder he didn't commit, E.J. developed a reputation for violence that preceded him everywhere he went. Finally, it brought him to a tragic and bloody end as his family watched in helpless horror. Borrowing an old local tale about a man who was killed by his neighbors, Matthiessen creates a powerful character. George Guidall's excellent reading brings this moving tragedy home to us with a passion.

Shadow Country is Peter Matthiessen's reimagining of the legend of E. J. Watson, the Everglades sugarcane planter and notorious outlaw of the wild Florida frontier. Vividly capturing the American hinterlands at the turn of the twentieth century, it traces the story of Watson through eyewitness perspectives as he drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him. 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." Originally written as three separate, acclaimed novels, this is Matthiessen's bold new distillation of his monumental work. Tightened and brilliantly rewritten throughout, he has collapsed the time frame while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters, achieving his original vision of the Watson trilogy.