Shadow Country (Modern Library) - Hardcover

Praise for Peter Matthiessen and the books of the Watson trilogy
"The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. "Shadow Country" lives up to anyone's highest expectations for great writing."
-Richard Ford
"The trilogy-novel by novel, sentence by sentence-is a masterpiece of world literature. I would give it every prize and award on earth."
-Annie Dillard
"I read "Bone by Bone" with admiration and pleasure. . . . The conquest of the continent is completed in the Southeast by strange characters, anarchic and almost always out of control, who however remain curiously coherent. The language is wonderful . . . very different from the descriptions of pioneering we have become accustomed to-a great advance on Walt Whitman. Or even Robert Frost."
-Saul Bellow
"Peter Matthiessen is a brilliantly gifted and ambitious writer. His storytelling skills are prodigious and his rapport with his subject is remarkable."
-Joyce Carol Oates
"Peter Matthiessen's work, in both fiction and nonfiction, is a unique achievement in American literature." Shadow Country," his distillation of the earlier Watson saga, represents his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy."
-W. S. Merwin
"[It] stands with the best that our nation has produced as literature. . . . As a political allegory, it is stunning."
"-Los Angeles Times Book Review"
"Intricately structured, richly documented, utterly convincing . . . certain to linger in the memory like an experience we have lived through."
"-The Washington Post Book World"
"Like Twain and Faulkner, Matthiessen has mastered the knack of achieving a literary effect without violating the authenticity of an unlettered voice."
"-Cleveland Plain Dealer"

Praise for" Shadow Country"
"Magnificent and capacious.... I'll just say right here that the book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go. Matthiessen has made his three-part saga into a new thing.... Finally now we have these books welded like a bell, and with Watson's song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate....a breathtaking saga." -- "The Los Angeles Times
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"Gorgeously written and unfailingly compelling, "Shadow Country" is the exhilarating masterwork of [Matthiessen's] career, every bit as ambitious as "Moby Dick,"" -- "National Geographic Adventure" magazine
"Peter Mattiessen consolidates his epic masterpiece of Florida -- and crafts something even better...[He] deserves credit for decades of meticulous research and obsessive details and soaring prose that converted the Watson legend into critically acclaimed literature....Anyone wanting an explanation for what happened to Florida can now find it in a single novel, a great American novel." -- "Miami Herald
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"Matthiessen is writing about one man's life in "Shadow Country," but he is also writing about the life of the nation over the course of half a century. Watson's story is essentially the story of the American frontier, of the conquering of wild lands and people, and of what such empires cost....Even among a body of work as magnificent as Matthiessen's, this is his great book." -- "St. Petersburg Times
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""Shadow Country" is a magnum opus. Matthiessen is meticulous in creating characters, lyrical in describing landscapes, and resolute in dissecting the values and costs that accompanied the development of this nation." --"Seattle Times"
"Shadow Country" is anambitious, lasting, and meaningful work of literature that will not soon fade away. It is a testament to Mr. Matthiessen's integrity as an artist that he felt compelled to return to the Watson material to produce this work and satisfy his original vision....a multifaceted work that can be read variously or simultaneously as a psychological novel, a historical novel, a morality tale, a political allegory, or a mystery. -- "East Hampton Star
""Matthiessen's Watson trilogy is a touchstone of modern American literature...this reworking...is remarkable....Where Watson was a magnificent character before, he comes across as nothing short of iconic here; it's difficult to find another figure in American literature so thoroughly and confincingly portrayed." -- "Publishers Weekly," starred review, Pick of the Week
"Matthiessen has reinvigorated and rejoined the trilogy's novels...a mosaic about the life and lynch-mob death of a turn-of-the century Florida Everglades sugar planter and serial killer named E. J. Watson -- into the 900-plus-page "Shadow Country," This is no mere repackaging: Four hundred pages were cut from the novels, previous background characters now tromp to the foreground, and the books' rangy, Faulknerian essence is rendered more digestible. Deliciously digestible, that is; this is a thick porterhouse of a novel." -- "Men's Journal"
"The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. SHADOW COUNTRY lives up to anyone's highest expectations for great writing." -- Richard Ford
"Peter Matthiessen is a brilliantly gifted and ambitious writer, an inspired anatomist of the American mythos. Hisstorytelling skills are prodigious and his rapport with his subject is remarkable." -- Joyce Carol Oates
"Peter Matthiessen's work, both in fiction and non-fiction, has become a unique achievement in his own generation and in American literature as a whole. Everything that he has written has been conveyed in his own clear, deeply informed, elegant and powerful prose. The Watson saga-in-the-round, to which he has devoted nearly thirty years, is his crowning achievement. SHADOW COUNTRY, his distillation of the earlier trilogy, is his transmutation of it to represent his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy." -- W.S. Merwin
Praise for Peter Matthiessen and the books of the Watson trilogy
"The fiction of Peter Matthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. "Shadow Country" lives up to anyone's highest expectations for great writing."
-Richard Ford
"The trilogy-novel by novel, sentence by sentence-is a masterpiece of world literature. I would give it every prize and award on earth."
-Annie Dillard
"I read "Bone by Bone" with admiration and pleasure. . . . The conquest of the continent is completed in the Southeast by strange characters, anarchic and almost always out of control, who however remain curiously coherent. The language is wonderful . . . very different from the descriptions of pioneering we have become accustomed to-a great advance on Walt Whitman. Or even Robert Frost."
-Saul Bellow
"Peter Matthiessen is a brilliantly gifted and ambitious writer. His storytelling skills are prodigious and his rapport with his subject is remarkable."
-JoyceCarol Oates
"Peter Matthiessen's work, in both fiction and nonfiction, is a unique achievement in American literature." Shadow Country," his distillation of the earlier Watson saga, represents his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy."
-W. S. Merwin
"[It] stands with the best that our nation has produced as literature. . . . As a political allegory, it is stunning."
"-Los Angeles Times Book Review"
"Intricately structured, richly documented, utterly convincing . . . certain to linger in the memory like an experience we have lived through."
"-The Washington Post Book World"
"Like Twain and Faulkner, Matthiessen has mastered the knack of achieving a literary effect without violating the authenticity of an unlettered voice."
"-Cleveland Plain Dealer"

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.