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When his novel Killing Mister Watson was published in 1990, the reviews were extraordinary. It was heralded as "a marvel of invention . . . a virtuoso performance" (The New York Times Book Review) and a "novel (that) stands with the best that our nation has produced as literature" (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Now Peter Matthiessen brings us the second novel in his Watson trilogy, a project that has been nearly twenty years in the writing. A story of epic scope and ambition, Lost Man's show more River confronts the primal relationship between a dangerous father and his desperate sons and the ways in which his death has shaped their lives. Lucius Watson is obsessed with learning the truth about his father. Who was E. J. Watson? Was he a devoted family man, an inspired farmer, a man of progress and vision? Or was he a cold-blooded murderer and amoral opportunist? Were his neighbors driven to kill him out of fear? Or was it envy? And if Watson was a killer, should the neighbors fear the obsessed Lucius when he returns to live among them and ask questions? The characters in this tale are men and women molded by the harsh elements of the Florida Everglades--an isolated breed, descendants of renegades and pioneers, who have only their grit, instinct, and tradition to wield against the obliterating forces of twentieth-century progress: Speck Daniels, moonshiner and alligator poacher turned gunrunner; Sally Brown, who struggles to escape the racism and shame of her local family; R. B. Collins, known as Chicken, crippled by drink and rage, who is the custodian of Watson secrets; Watson Dyer, the unacknowledged namesake with designs on the remote Watson homestead hidden in the wild rivers; and Henry Short, a black man and unwilling member of the group of armed island men who awaited E. J. Watson in the silent twilight. Only a storyteller of Peter Matthiessen's dazzling artistry could capture the beauty and strangeness of life on this lawless frontier while probing deeply into its underlying tragedy: the brutal destruction of the land in the name of progress, and the racism that infects the heart of New World history. show lessTags
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This is the 2nd in the Shadow Country trilogy. I enjoyed it as much as the first (Killing Mister Watson). Good writing with a wonderful sense of character and place and SW Florida history. It’s long with lots of characters and relationships to keep straight so it’s a commitment, even as an audio edition. In this 2nd volume, one of Ed Watson’s sons, now middle-aged, sets out to write a biography of his father as a pioneer of the Everglades and to find out whether he had killed all of the people he’d been rumored to murder. Looking forward to eventually reading the 3rd book.
Matthiessen wrote about this book in an author’s note to SHADOW COUNTRY, the single volume version he’d intended for what became a trilogy: “...the show more ‘trilogy’ solution never fulfilled my original idea of this book’s true nature. While the first book and the third stood on their own, the middle section, which had served originally as a kind of connecting tissue, yet contained much of the heart and brain of the whole organism, lacked its own armature or bony skeleton; cut away from the others, it became amorphous, reminding me not agreeably of the long belly of a dachshund, slung woefully between its upright sturdy legs. In short, the work felt unfinished...”.
I agree with this assessment, which I read several weeks after finishing this 2nd volume. I had actually been aware of feeling suspended, that I couldn’t just read the first 2 books of the trilogy, that I felt almost compelled to read the 3rd in order to feel I’d read a complete work. I had not felt that way upon finishing the 1st volume; I could easily have stopped then but decided to continue working my way through the trilogy because I liked PM’s writing and I was curious what he had done with volumes 2 and 3, knowing at the time that he had intended the work to be a single novel, not a trilogy. show less
Matthiessen wrote about this book in an author’s note to SHADOW COUNTRY, the single volume version he’d intended for what became a trilogy: “...the show more ‘trilogy’ solution never fulfilled my original idea of this book’s true nature. While the first book and the third stood on their own, the middle section, which had served originally as a kind of connecting tissue, yet contained much of the heart and brain of the whole organism, lacked its own armature or bony skeleton; cut away from the others, it became amorphous, reminding me not agreeably of the long belly of a dachshund, slung woefully between its upright sturdy legs. In short, the work felt unfinished...”.
I agree with this assessment, which I read several weeks after finishing this 2nd volume. I had actually been aware of feeling suspended, that I couldn’t just read the first 2 books of the trilogy, that I felt almost compelled to read the 3rd in order to feel I’d read a complete work. I had not felt that way upon finishing the 1st volume; I could easily have stopped then but decided to continue working my way through the trilogy because I liked PM’s writing and I was curious what he had done with volumes 2 and 3, knowing at the time that he had intended the work to be a single novel, not a trilogy. show less
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48+ Works 13,947 Members
Peter Matthiessen was born in Manhattan, New York on May 22, 1927. He served in the Navy at Pearl Harbor. He graduated with a degree in English from Yale University in 1950. It was around this time that he was recruited by the CIA and traveled to Paris, where he became acquainted with several young expatriate American writers. In the postwar years show more the CIA covertly financed magazines and cultural programs to counter the spread of Communism. While in Paris, he helped found The Paris Review in 1953. After returning to the United States, he worked as a commercial fisherman and the captain of a charter fishing boat. His first novel, Race Rock, was published in 1954. His other fiction works include Partisans, Raditzer, Far Tortuga, and In Paradise. His novel, Shadow Country, won a National Book Award. His novel, At Play in the Fields of the Lord, was made into a movie. He started writing nonfiction after divorcing his first wife. An assignment for Sports Illustrated to report on American endangered species led to the book Wildlife in America, which was published in 1959. His travels took him to Asia, Australia, South America, Africa, New Guinea, the Florida swamps, and beneath the ocean. These travels led to articles in The New Yorker as well as numerous nonfiction books including The Cloud Forest: A Chronicle of the South American Wilderness, Under the Mountain Wall: A Chronicle of Two Seasons of Stone Age New Guinea, Blue Meridian: The Search for the Great White Shark, The Tree Where Man Was Born, and Men's Lives. The Snow Leopard won the 1979 National Book Award for nonfiction. He died from leukemia on April 5, 2014 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Lost Man's River
- Original publication date
- 1997
- People/Characters
- Lucius Watson
- Important places
- Florida, USA; Ten Thousand Islands, Florida, USA
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 325
- Popularity
- 97,332
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.85)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 14
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 5
