Shadow Country is a novel by Peter Matthiessen published in 2008 by Random House. It tells the semi-fictional life story of Edgar "Bloody" Watson, a real Florida sugar cane planter and alleged murderer and outlaw who was killed in the remote Ten Thousand Islands region of southwest Florida in 1910.
Shadow Country is a reworked, re-edited, and retitled single-volume version of an earlier trilogy written by the same author. The novel contains three parts, each corresponding to one of the three source novels originally published in the 1990s: "Killing Mr. Watson," "Lost Man's River," and "Bone By Bone."
Book One is based on Killing Mr. Watson, and is a collection of various first-person accounts about the notorious planter's rise to power and eventual death at the hands of his neighbors. The first scene describes Watson being gunned down by an armed posse on the shores of Chokoloskee Island. The narrative then jumps back to describe Watson's arrival in the Ten Thousand Islands and proceeds chronologically forward to its opening scene.
Book Two is based on Lost Man's River. This section tells the story of Watson's youngest son, an alcoholic historian who tries to reconstruct his father's life in order to determine whether or not he was really a murderer and outlaw.
Book Three is based on Bone By Bone and is a first-person account in the words of Edgar Watson himself. The main character tells his entire life story from his own point of view, from his childhood in South Carolina to his fatal encounter with his neighbors on the edge of the Florida Everglades.
Shadow Country won the National Book Award in 2008 and William Dean Howells Medal in 2010.