Book Review: Shadow Country
Author Peter Matthiessen's original trilogy about sugar-cane planter Ed Watson and his son Lucius is here condensed into one mysterious novel divided into three sections.
Review by Valerie Kramer Davis
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
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Shadow Country: A New Rendering of the Watson Legend
By Peter Matthiessen
The Modern Library, May 2008
892 pages
This novel encompasses American history, politics, and morality while telling the story of our nation through the legend of one 19th century man, outlaw Edgar J. Watson. Author Peter Matthiessen's original trilogy, Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man's River, and Bone by Bone, now known as a piece of great American literature, is here condensed into one mysterious novel divided into three sections.
Throughout the book, the description of the Florida Everglades—a "misty swampland ... in darkness, its frogs mute"—depicts a time when the region was tempestuous and unsettled. In the first section, the tale of sugar-cane planter Ed Watson is brought to life through eyewitness accounts and journal entries of fellow citizens. Opinions of both friends and enemies run the gamut, and a mystery about him remains. "We never had no trouble from Mister Watson, and from what we seen, he never caused none," recalls neighbor Erskine Thompson. Others think Watson is crazy, and they fear him so much that they call him the devil.
Book Two takes place after Watson is murdered. It is told in third person from the perspective of his devastated son, Lucius, who searches for his father's true-life story. When Lucius returns to his homeland, he investigates Watson's death through interviews and library archives. While doing so, he runs into a long-lost brother, a denied engagement proposal, and the realization that he is obsessed with the truth about his father.
The final book, Bone by Bone, is storytelling at its best as Watson remembers his own life. When the final resolution comes, you feel as though you're there.
Although the nearly 900-page tome is slow moving throughout, the end of Book Three has the suspense to keep you entertained.
Rating: 
–Review by Valerie Kramer Davis
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