Lost Man's River by Peter Matthiessen

Lost Man's River by Peter Matthiessen

The second novel in the Watson trilogy by one of the rare American writers to be nominated for the National Book Award in both fiction and nonfiction.

Lucius Watson is hell-bent on discovering the truth about his father, EJ Watson. Was he a dedicated family guy, a visionary farmer, or a man of progress? Was he a cold-blooded killer and amoral opportunist, or was he something else entirely? Were his neighbors compelled to murder him because they were afraid of him? Or was it a case of jealousy? Should the neighbors be afraid of the preoccupied Lucius when he returns to live among them and asks inquiries if Watson was a murderer?

The protagonists in this story are men and women who have been shaped by the harsh elements of the Florida Everglades--an isolated species, 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 fights to escape the prejudice and xenophobia that plagues her community; and others

Lost Man's River explores the basic relationship between a dangerous father and his desperate kids, as well as the ways in which his death has impacted their lives, in a drama of epic breadth and ambition.

Peter Cunningham was born and raised in Waterford, the place that inspired Monument, the town in Love in One Edition. The Sea and the Silence (Gemma 2010), Consequences of the Heart (Gemma 2011), and Tapes of the River Delta (Gemma 2012) are his previous Monument novels. He has written a number of thrillers, both under his own name and under pseudonyms, as well as the books Who Trespass Against Us (London, 1993), Taoiseach (London, 2004), and Capital Sins (Dublin, 2010) in the UK and Ireland. He is a member of the Irish Academy of Letters, Aosdana.