Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen is a capital "g" Great American novel. It's actually a revised blend of three earlier works, a trilogy compressed into one volume. Shadow Country won the National Book Award in 2008, and deserved it. I had read The Snow Leopard by Matthiessen, and I like The Paris Review, which he co-founded. This novel was still an enormous revelation, a triumph of historical fiction and perspective. Ed Watson--the outlaw protagonist--is murdered in the first few pages and unsurprisingly again at the end (the structure of the text makes this obvious), but in between the narrative expands and contracts and swings wildly into the years before and after the death. A diverse chorus of characters, not least Watson himself, tell the story, and the result is copious but not comprehensive. Satisfyingly, Shadow Country retains its mystery and murkiness even after its 900 pages.
Matthiessen grapples with the setting--South Florida post-Reconstruction--in all its ugliness. Racism, environmental destruction, alcoholism, sexism, and a pervasive code of warped frontier justice all infect the worldview so thoroughly that violence becomes predictable, even commonplace. It's hard to assign blame for the destruction in the novel. Capitalism played a part, as did Civil War trauma. A vague standoff with indigenous tribes in the Everglades. Watson's own childhood abuse. Even indifferent nature, with its mosquitoes and hurricanes. The last flashes of Watson's consciousness--"this world is painted on a wild dark metal"--may be the closest we get to a reason for it all. Shadow Country is exhausting, then, but skillfully told and worth the slog.
