What do you think?
Rate this book
Shadow Country Trilogy #2
Lost Man's River
Peter Matthiessen is one of the few American writers ever nominated for the National Book Award for both fiction and nonfiction.
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 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 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 the brutal destruction of the land in the name of progress, and the racism that infects the heart of New World history.
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 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 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 the brutal destruction of the land in the name of progress, and the racism that infects the heart of New World history.
539 pages, Hardcover
First published October 21, 1997
61 people are currently reading
587 people want to read
About the author
Peter Matthiessen
143 books914 followersPeter Matthiessen is the author of more than thirty books and the only writer to win the National Book Award for both non-fiction (The Snow Leopard, in two categories, in 1979 and 1980) and fiction (Shadow Country, in 2008). A co-founder of The Paris Review and a world-renowned naturalist, explorer and activist, he died in April 2014.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews
November 1, 2016
My Grandmother passed this book on to me along with Killing Mister Watson the last time I saw her - it must nearly twenty years ago now. She always had an uncanny ability to find books for me, regardless of my stage of life. This was no mean feat, as although we spent considerable time together when I was growing up in Winnipeg, my family moved away when I was quite young. So for her to be able to figure out what I would like at 12, 22, and 32 years of age - with increasingly infrequent contact - is pretty impressive, almost eerily so. I loved Killing Mister Watson, but gave myself a lengthy break before venturing onto book two of the trilogy. Now Matthiessen is a masterful storyteller, and he's mining a rich vein by revisiting the deep bayous of Florida, but I didn't do myself any favours by trying to read Lost Man's River in parallel with my other late night reading obligations. The plot is fairly straightforward, Lucius Watson investigates the cold blooded lynching of his father E.J. He does so by returning to his roots and trying to piece together what happened to his father by renewing contact with his extended family. Problem is E.J got around a bit - so by the time Lucius locates his siblings, step-siblings, and various cousins it gets pretty confusing keeping track of who is who. This may be ok if you're able to immerse yourself in the story, but it becomes a struggle if you're only picking up the book every other night. Each time, I would need to flip back a couple of pages to try to figure out what was going on before I could proceed. And the pages are dense, so for a long stretch of time progress was glacial, but for some reason - maybe it was the spirit of my grandmother, or maybe it was the undeniable quality of Matthiessen's writing - I kept at it. I took a gamble that if I hung around long enough things would come together. And they do: the story ends up concentrating on a handful of interesting characters, the plot twists unexpectedly, and most of the loose ends are resolved. It felt like a massive investment of time, but I'm glad I persevered. I just wish I read it properly start to finish.
May 2, 2009
“Lost Man’s River” is the second novel in Matthiessen’s Watson Trilogy. But in this 1997 work, he approaches the story from a different direction.
Lucius Watson has heard the rumors about his father: Edgar J. Watson. Could they possibly be true? Was he a pillar of the community, killed by a mob of townspeople because they were envious of his success? Or, was he a cold-blooded killer, publicly executed out of fear for their own safety?
Rooted in the legend of “the Watson killing,” Matthiessen has created a second novel, a loosely structured tale of a son, who wants to know the truth about his lost father. Will he be vindicated by what he learns or frightened? Like “Killing Mister Watson,” this second novel is rich in the detritus of the Sunshine State’s colorful wild past and the people “molded by the harsh elements of the Everglades.” Gator poachers, gunrunners, moonshiners, desperate to hang on to a way of life that was rapidly disappearing.
"A man came in out of the fire mist, crossing the shadow land of the killed woods. He drifted, disappeared, and came again though smoke and blackened thorn, moving from willow clump to bush like a panther traveling across open savanna."
The woods are now killed, and the Florida panther is all but gone.
Matthiessen may be best known for his works of non-fiction (as perhaps, indeed he should), but this proves that he is an equally adept novelist.
Lucius Watson has heard the rumors about his father: Edgar J. Watson. Could they possibly be true? Was he a pillar of the community, killed by a mob of townspeople because they were envious of his success? Or, was he a cold-blooded killer, publicly executed out of fear for their own safety?
Rooted in the legend of “the Watson killing,” Matthiessen has created a second novel, a loosely structured tale of a son, who wants to know the truth about his lost father. Will he be vindicated by what he learns or frightened? Like “Killing Mister Watson,” this second novel is rich in the detritus of the Sunshine State’s colorful wild past and the people “molded by the harsh elements of the Everglades.” Gator poachers, gunrunners, moonshiners, desperate to hang on to a way of life that was rapidly disappearing.
"A man came in out of the fire mist, crossing the shadow land of the killed woods. He drifted, disappeared, and came again though smoke and blackened thorn, moving from willow clump to bush like a panther traveling across open savanna."
The woods are now killed, and the Florida panther is all but gone.
Matthiessen may be best known for his works of non-fiction (as perhaps, indeed he should), but this proves that he is an equally adept novelist.
June 25, 2023
The trilogy that this is the second one of gave me a rich and distinct vision of Florida bedore it was totally centralized and integrated into the modern USA. But this book was super hard for me to read and I just lost interest. The main character, Lucius Watson is looking for the truth about his father’s murder and his father’s life. And there are tons of stories within stories being told along the way and it just gets too confusing for me. And I just didn’t care. I do appreciate the natural history of Florida though.
October 1, 2009
When I travel I see some people in the subway or on a street and I think to myself that I would like to know more about them...where they live...what they like and dislike...and who they mingle with.
This book is a fictional account of such meetings, except these are long lost family members from multiple marriages and illicit relationships from years gone by. Matthiessen is a great story teller and makes you want more. This is not a short book, and the length allows the author to introduce so many characters that it is near impossible to keep up with them all. I did find myself getting lost in some of the more remote characters, but in the end I was able to keep track of the main ones.
I would have given the book another star, but there is some language from some of the colorful characters that made me uncomfortable.
This book is a fictional account of such meetings, except these are long lost family members from multiple marriages and illicit relationships from years gone by. Matthiessen is a great story teller and makes you want more. This is not a short book, and the length allows the author to introduce so many characters that it is near impossible to keep up with them all. I did find myself getting lost in some of the more remote characters, but in the end I was able to keep track of the main ones.
I would have given the book another star, but there is some language from some of the colorful characters that made me uncomfortable.
May 28, 2019
It is difficult to know how to rate this book. The writing is beautiful and Matthiessen tells a 540 page story mostly through authentic Southern dialogue. On the other hand, the author is maddingly self-indulgent: This story could have been told in half the number of pages and it would have been a better read had he done so.
September 22, 2020
Lost Man's River is Part 2 of the trilogy of Matthiessen called Shadow Country. Part 2 tells the story of Lucius, one of Edgar Watson's sons, in the form of a third person narrative. While initially an alcoholic, Lucius succeeds in righting his life and becomes a PhD and notable historian. He promised conclusions such as:
"Good and evil we known in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably (John Milton - Areopagitica)."
"A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see [its] mystery (John Keats)."
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. (George Eliot, Middlemarch)."
Without doubt, Matthiessen was successful. My only concern about Lost Man's River is that it bogged down for me in the middle. Lucius is writing the story of his efforts to write a biography of his father. If Edgar Watson wasn't already complicated on his own merits, he marries three times and has two common law wives. As a result, following the names of offspring and relationships is a reader's challenge. But I liked how it flowed ultimately and especially how it ended.
As an indicator of Matthiessen artistic skills in prose, I submit the following example:
"Not until years later, as Lucius resumed Papa’s biography, would these four cane cutters, never accounted for, rise from the abyss of dream memory as wild petroleum seeps up from the earth crust to form strange rainbows on black marshland pools."
Looking forward to Part 3, Bone By Bone, a first person narrative in which Edgar Watson tells his own life story.
"Good and evil we known in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably (John Milton - Areopagitica)."
"A man's life of any worth is a continual allegory - and very few eyes can see [its] mystery (John Keats)."
If we had a keen vision and feeling of all ordinary human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow and the squirrel's heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence. (George Eliot, Middlemarch)."
Without doubt, Matthiessen was successful. My only concern about Lost Man's River is that it bogged down for me in the middle. Lucius is writing the story of his efforts to write a biography of his father. If Edgar Watson wasn't already complicated on his own merits, he marries three times and has two common law wives. As a result, following the names of offspring and relationships is a reader's challenge. But I liked how it flowed ultimately and especially how it ended.
As an indicator of Matthiessen artistic skills in prose, I submit the following example:
"Not until years later, as Lucius resumed Papa’s biography, would these four cane cutters, never accounted for, rise from the abyss of dream memory as wild petroleum seeps up from the earth crust to form strange rainbows on black marshland pools."
Looking forward to Part 3, Bone By Bone, a first person narrative in which Edgar Watson tells his own life story.
May 6, 2022
4.5 ⭐️
Book 2 of the Shadow Country trilogy. This one from Lucius one of Watson’s young sons and told in the 3rd person of his life. This is the longest of the 3 books and from what I remember of Shadow Country (the re-worked, re-edited) single volume that came out in 2010 it is a lot. Way too long. There are brilliant pieces in this. And at one point Lucius even seems baffled by all the constant discrepancies in the story of who killed his father (no, not a spoiler). I’m glad I read this. Reading this trilogy in the separate novels just makes me admire Matthiessen as a writer even more. An incredible piece of art.
Onto book 3, Bone by Bone.
Book 2 of the Shadow Country trilogy. This one from Lucius one of Watson’s young sons and told in the 3rd person of his life. This is the longest of the 3 books and from what I remember of Shadow Country (the re-worked, re-edited) single volume that came out in 2010 it is a lot. Way too long. There are brilliant pieces in this. And at one point Lucius even seems baffled by all the constant discrepancies in the story of who killed his father (no, not a spoiler). I’m glad I read this. Reading this trilogy in the separate novels just makes me admire Matthiessen as a writer even more. An incredible piece of art.
Onto book 3, Bone by Bone.
December 29, 2011
Sequel follows "Killing Mister Watson" with the story of his son, Lucius, trying to find out the truth of his father's life and death. He does...but he must be about 80 years old when he does. Time passes very slowly in the SW Florida everglades country and somethings are best left alone.
I give it only three stars because it is a 350 page story but it takes the author 500+ pages to tell it. I also had difficulty with the chronology of the story. Some of the characters witnessed the death of Mr. Watson in 1910 but the narritive takes place sometime after the Viet Nam war and I found it hard to believe that they were still taking such an active part in the events of the story at what must be a very advanced age after living on moonshine and enduring the harships of such a hostile environment. Apart from that, it was a very good -- but dark -- story and a good follow-up to Killing Mister Watson.
The last book of the trilogy is "Bone by Bone" in which Mr. Watson tells his own story. The first book of the trilogy stuck with me for over 15 years before I went back and read the 2nd. I may wait a while again before I take on Watson's own narrative. I am a fan of Joseph Conrad and some of his dark stories but I need to step away from Mr. Watson and his "heart of darkness" for a while.
By the way...Matthiessen re-wrote all three of these books into one volume under the title "Shadow Country" and won the 2008 National Book Club award. Also, if you really get hooked by this story...there is a song titled "E. Watson" by The Decemberists that was included on one of their albums.
I give it only three stars because it is a 350 page story but it takes the author 500+ pages to tell it. I also had difficulty with the chronology of the story. Some of the characters witnessed the death of Mr. Watson in 1910 but the narritive takes place sometime after the Viet Nam war and I found it hard to believe that they were still taking such an active part in the events of the story at what must be a very advanced age after living on moonshine and enduring the harships of such a hostile environment. Apart from that, it was a very good -- but dark -- story and a good follow-up to Killing Mister Watson.
The last book of the trilogy is "Bone by Bone" in which Mr. Watson tells his own story. The first book of the trilogy stuck with me for over 15 years before I went back and read the 2nd. I may wait a while again before I take on Watson's own narrative. I am a fan of Joseph Conrad and some of his dark stories but I need to step away from Mr. Watson and his "heart of darkness" for a while.
By the way...Matthiessen re-wrote all three of these books into one volume under the title "Shadow Country" and won the 2008 National Book Club award. Also, if you really get hooked by this story...there is a song titled "E. Watson" by The Decemberists that was included on one of their albums.
July 18, 2009
Sawgrass, shell hammock, tree line, sun, water, sky, wall of clouds on the horizon, mangrove. As reader I stood in the middle of this, lost, peering in every direction for rescue. That's not to say I didn't like it--I did. Matthiessen's a wonderful writer, able to describe landscapes, the movement of birds, wind on the water poetically, able to detail characters and their motives clearly. Give yourself some time when you read him--you'll be impressed. But there are too many characters. It's a simple story too slowly revealed by a Babel of voices. The reader badly needs a genealogical chart to help organize and keep straight the characters and families involved. The concerns of the novel are those of Killing Mister Watson, the trilogy's 1st volume, retold in several roundabout ways. And his great epic themes are preswnt: an Eden, good people plagued by a Satan figure, a paradise doubly tainted by the spill of evil and by the despoilization of modern progress. But it's too long. Confused, lost in the channels and tidal flows of plot and character, I stared at the horizon, eager for the novel's end. Last year Matthiessen published his one-volume revision of the trilogy as Shadow Country. I feel sure it gives his narrative the trimming and streamlining and improvement it needs. Later in the year when I read Bone by Bone, the 3d volume, I know I'll dangle a lifeline into that paradise so I can pull myself out.
March 14, 2012
This is the second book of an amazing trilogy set in south Florida by an important American author -- the author was so deep into this story that he rewrote the trilogy into a one volume version, Shadow Country, which won the National Book Award in 2008.
The first volume of this, Killing Mr. Watson, is told from multiple viewpoints, the second volume is follows the life of Mr. Watson's third son, Lucius, as he attempts to puzzle out the character and life of his much loved father. Was Mr. Watson the killer many people said he was? Did he deserve his "execution" by some men of the community?
Lucius loves the natural world and Indian history of south Florida and I enjoyed the stories of the Everglades as it was in the early days of the plume and alligator hunters. But the author's time scale is off in this book . . . the story is set in the 1960s, years after the area has become a national park, yet Lucius is thinking about the time his father spent there (1890-1910)and finding many people with memories of those days. One feels sympathy for Lucius but he's not a man of action so the story seems to drag. This book needed editing but still is very worth reading.
The first volume of this, Killing Mr. Watson, is told from multiple viewpoints, the second volume is follows the life of Mr. Watson's third son, Lucius, as he attempts to puzzle out the character and life of his much loved father. Was Mr. Watson the killer many people said he was? Did he deserve his "execution" by some men of the community?
Lucius loves the natural world and Indian history of south Florida and I enjoyed the stories of the Everglades as it was in the early days of the plume and alligator hunters. But the author's time scale is off in this book . . . the story is set in the 1960s, years after the area has become a national park, yet Lucius is thinking about the time his father spent there (1890-1910)and finding many people with memories of those days. One feels sympathy for Lucius but he's not a man of action so the story seems to drag. This book needed editing but still is very worth reading.
January 22, 2012
I really tried to stay with this book, reading almost half way through, but it just didn't go anywhere for me. I kept wondering where the story was going. It just didn't come together for me.
I have to get into the main characters for a book to keep me captivated. Again, this didn't even come close.
I have to get into the main characters for a book to keep me captivated. Again, this didn't even come close.
February 5, 2021
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 ‘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.
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 ‘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.
January 28, 2023
This is the second book in the SHADOW COUNTRY trilogy that began with KILLING MISTER WATSON. While the first book covered the killing of Edgar J. Watson by many of his neighbors in Chokoloskie, FL in 1910; this book looks at the same story through the eyes of his younger historian son, Lucius, 50 years later as he tries to really find who killed his father and if they can save the family home in what is now the Everglades. At first, I found it quite interesting but as he interviewed so many family members and people who knew the family's story from north Florida to the Everglades, the story became extremely muddled. By the end of this 539 page slog, I was tired. I have read that the last book in the trilogy, BONE BY BONE, is a much better read. I will give it a shot despite my disappointment in this book. Peter Matthiessen was extremely passionate about this story, based on the killing of a real man, that he spent 20 years researching it and even wrote another 912 page book that brought these three books under one cover. I may skip that one.
November 10, 2023
This is a relentlessly meandering story the winds and circles obsessively over, and over, around and in between, the same question and series of events. Told from dozens of perspectives with a seemingly endless cast of characters, there are lot of people to keep track of, or get lost in, but an echo and repetition to the story line that is like being swept up and out by a series of hypnotic waves. It difficult for me to explain how hauntingly beautiful and maddening this book can be. The writing is breathtaking and the characters and setting so vividly drawn. The story requires a reader with patience and perseverance, but its worth wading into the deep end with Mr. Matthiessen.
October 25, 2019
I listened to this using the RBdigital app on my phone and when I accidentally went from somewhere in chapter five to chapter eleven I discovered I didn't care enough about the story to find my back.
It's an okay story, great if you want a sense of post-Civil War Florida. If I come across a print copy I would probably pick it up again.
It's an okay story, great if you want a sense of post-Civil War Florida. If I come across a print copy I would probably pick it up again.
July 3, 2021
Neither as concise nor as powerful as “Killing Mister Watson,” this story of Watson’s son, Lucius, is still deeply imagined and richly detailed, if also slow and over-populated. Matthiessen is a beautiful writer, but LMR meanders and the social commentary feels forced. As much as I admired the ambition, the novel was a chore to finish. High marks as art, lower marks for storytelling, maybe?
July 11, 2022
"Killing Mr. Watson" was a five star book. Period.
"Lost Man's River" is a climb up and down the fictional family tree of EJ Watson, with no apparent plot; you need a scorecard to keep track of all the people and their relationships. I got about 20% thru it and had to give it up. It was just a horrible and taxing read.
"Lost Man's River" is a climb up and down the fictional family tree of EJ Watson, with no apparent plot; you need a scorecard to keep track of all the people and their relationships. I got about 20% thru it and had to give it up. It was just a horrible and taxing read.
July 13, 2020
A pandemic may have been the wrong time to read this book for me. It has all of Peter Matthiessen's mastery of language but grew tiresome as he interviews family member after family member trying to determine whether his fictional father was a serial killer or a nice man.
March 1, 2025
These folks HATED Everglades national park!
The racism was endemic and stunning….
Very insular community that in turns bred loyalty and contempt.
By the end of the book, I never need to hear the name Watson ever again.
The racism was endemic and stunning….
Very insular community that in turns bred loyalty and contempt.
By the end of the book, I never need to hear the name Watson ever again.
August 13, 2022
This might have ended up getting better but I couldn’t finish it. It was just monotonous and boring.
April 3, 2016
I'm a big fan of Mattheissen, both is fiction and non-, but this one was really strange. (Granted, I didn't red the first part of the Watson trilogy.) There is essentially no plot, just an aggrieved son trying to salvage his murdered father's reputation. The theme is memory and how fickle it can be, plus an examination of what is "truth."
Lucius goes from faulty informant to faulty informant. Too many characters and their connections just confused me. I wish he's just taken NO for an answer--no, E.J. wasn't the saint and innocent you are desperately trying to make him into. Still, this is also an historical novel about the early 20th century Florida cracker pioneers ekeing out a living in the swamps, bootlegging, poaching, farming and fishing. Oh, and killing each other!
When the national park came in in 1947, an all-out range war broke out with the Park Service and the backwoods families.
Matthiessen's elegy for the Florida that disappeared with the draining of the Everglades is very evocative. I also enjoyed his rendition of the dialect.
Note: The rebound of the American alligator is one of our greatest ecological success stories. Ditto for egrets, which plume huinter decimated before Audubon convinced women to change their hat styles. Males were killed in breeding season for their head plume "nuptial plumage." But a drive through Big Cypress today shows both species thriving.
Lucius goes from faulty informant to faulty informant. Too many characters and their connections just confused me. I wish he's just taken NO for an answer--no, E.J. wasn't the saint and innocent you are desperately trying to make him into. Still, this is also an historical novel about the early 20th century Florida cracker pioneers ekeing out a living in the swamps, bootlegging, poaching, farming and fishing. Oh, and killing each other!
When the national park came in in 1947, an all-out range war broke out with the Park Service and the backwoods families.
Matthiessen's elegy for the Florida that disappeared with the draining of the Everglades is very evocative. I also enjoyed his rendition of the dialect.
Note: The rebound of the American alligator is one of our greatest ecological success stories. Ditto for egrets, which plume huinter decimated before Audubon convinced women to change their hat styles. Males were killed in breeding season for their head plume "nuptial plumage." But a drive through Big Cypress today shows both species thriving.
November 21, 2018
There is a reason the Goodreads blurb for this book starts by praising Matthiessen's other works. Killing Mr. Watson is a great read, and Far Tortuga is in my top 10 of all time. This follows the child of Mister Watson as he seeks to find the "truth" about his father. Was Watson a deranged killer, a man defending his homestead? Was he killed by a righteous mob, or heartless lynchers?
I do not recommend picking this up unless you have read Killing Mr. Watson. You will be able to follow the story, but it won't interest you. Even having read the previous book, this was a slog to get through. That said, it's Matthiessen, so it is so masterfully written, and the characters so alive, that if you can ignore the minutiae that he gets into you will enjoy it. Those with an interest in antebellum Florida history, as well as how Florida went from backwater/backwoods to the land of strip malls and Disney will find this engaging, especially if you have read Watson.
I do not recommend picking this up unless you have read Killing Mr. Watson. You will be able to follow the story, but it won't interest you. Even having read the previous book, this was a slog to get through. That said, it's Matthiessen, so it is so masterfully written, and the characters so alive, that if you can ignore the minutiae that he gets into you will enjoy it. Those with an interest in antebellum Florida history, as well as how Florida went from backwater/backwoods to the land of strip malls and Disney will find this engaging, especially if you have read Watson.
September 15, 2013
***1/2 for the novel, ***** for George Guidall's masterful narration (this novel is about storytelling and therefore should be listened to as an audiobook).
This is book 2 in Mr. Matthiessen's WATSON TRILOGY. In LOST MAN'S RIVER the main theme is Truth or TRUTHINESS: what should we believe is true? Is truth democratic, meaning the belief of the majority trumps the belief of the one? Is a historian's conclusion more veracious than an ancient redneck's eyewitness account of the same incident? Are racists reliable eyewitnesses?
Mr. Watson's youngest son, Lucius, wanders through the everglades 50 years after the murder of his father listening to swamp folk tell the local legends and first-hand accounts of his father's life, his supposed crimes against humanity and his death, hoping to write a factual biography of Mr. Watson. But in his heart Lucius believes his father is innocent of the heinous crimes accorded him and he wants to exonerate his father in his biography; however, in these stories and confessions Lucius hears the truth slowly creeping up on him and it may not be what he wants to hear, and what he believes in his heart and blood may not be strong enough to hide the truth.
My only criticism is that the novel is about 150 pages too long.
This is book 2 in Mr. Matthiessen's WATSON TRILOGY. In LOST MAN'S RIVER the main theme is Truth or TRUTHINESS: what should we believe is true? Is truth democratic, meaning the belief of the majority trumps the belief of the one? Is a historian's conclusion more veracious than an ancient redneck's eyewitness account of the same incident? Are racists reliable eyewitnesses?
Mr. Watson's youngest son, Lucius, wanders through the everglades 50 years after the murder of his father listening to swamp folk tell the local legends and first-hand accounts of his father's life, his supposed crimes against humanity and his death, hoping to write a factual biography of Mr. Watson. But in his heart Lucius believes his father is innocent of the heinous crimes accorded him and he wants to exonerate his father in his biography; however, in these stories and confessions Lucius hears the truth slowly creeping up on him and it may not be what he wants to hear, and what he believes in his heart and blood may not be strong enough to hide the truth.
My only criticism is that the novel is about 150 pages too long.
October 30, 2011
Excellent writing. For me, this is the type of book you read slowly, not the type you cannot put down. I have put it down and picked it up again for about three months now, in between reading other books. Still, I do keep picking it up. It is full of accounts of many different people of an incident that happened in the past, along with many of their extraneous memories of the time, and sometimes it drags on a bit. You wander into someone's house somewhere in the backwoods of South Florida, settle down into a dusty, overstuffed chair with broken springs, and listen to the occupants go on and on about their lives and the sorry state of the local environment, before and since the government took over much of it. The incident was the murder of one man perpetrated by a group of folks--or was it murder, self-defense? Or did the man deserve it? This is what his son, who is now an old man, attempts to discover. Was his father evil or good?
Peter Matthiessen must have known these people well to represent them so excellently. I didn't know them, so I can only imagine, but I did know similar folks from Tennessee when I was young and it all rings true.
Peter Matthiessen must have known these people well to represent them so excellently. I didn't know them, so I can only imagine, but I did know similar folks from Tennessee when I was young and it all rings true.
December 20, 2016
Matthiessen tells a great yarn that holds strong in no small part due to the intimate knowledge of the land, history, creatures, lore, speech, names, and people who inhabit the places he guides the reader through along the way. Stitched into this vivid landscape is a timeless theme of humans struggling with their past, their present, and the truth and myths of both. This theme will cut deep and ring a deep sounding in the heart and mind bays of anyone who has contemplated the contradictory nature of humanity, and in particular one's own part and parcel of it. We are vastly imperfect creatures, but we are beautiful in our imperfection and ugliness, something Matthiessen has distilled with a skill matched by few others.
May 11, 2020
Lost Man’s River (Shadow Country Trilogy #2) by Peter Matthiessen (Random House 1997) (Fiction). This is the second book in the Shadow Country trilogy. In this volume, Lucious Watson, second son of the assassinated Edgar Watson, shows up in the Everglades asking dangerous questions about how and why his father was shot by a mob of neighbors and townsfolk. Is this innocent information seeking, or do these questions have a darker ulterior motive? My rating: 8/10, finished 1999.
April 2, 2015
Reading Lost Man's River was like being lost at a family reunion for a fortnight. On and on the old forgotten stories are repeated and repeated with a different slant each time. The writing is wonderful. The locale is memorable. Sometimes I think he went too far with too many characters resulting in a certain lack of focus for the good of the story. Everything was resolved in the last 2-3 chapters. I did like the ending.
January 13, 2010
Incredibly boring. Don't know what happened because Killing Mister Watson was so good.
This book was like throwing dead batteries at cows while listening to the live story of George Burns, narrated by George Burns, all the while having that guy from Wild America whimper about the destruction of the Everglades.
Good bye Mr. Matthiessen.
This book was like throwing dead batteries at cows while listening to the live story of George Burns, narrated by George Burns, all the while having that guy from Wild America whimper about the destruction of the Everglades.
Good bye Mr. Matthiessen.
November 16, 2010
I really wanted to like this book - but maybe I must give Peter Matthiessen another shot, if/when I can find a copy of The Snow Leopard (the book that was recommended by the person who said Matthiessen was wonderful).
Displaying 1 - 30 of 43 reviews