Shadow Country
A New Rendering of the Watson Legend
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Narrated by:
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Anthony Heald
About this listen
National Book Award, Fiction, 2008
Inspired by a near-mythic event on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the 20th century, Shadow Country re-imagines the legend of the inspired Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson, who drives himself relentlessly toward his own violent end at the hands of neighbors who mostly admired him, in a killing that obsessed his favorite son.Shadow Country transverses strange landscapes inhabited by Americans of every provenance and color, including the black and Indian inheritors of archaic racism that "still casts its shadow over the nation."
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"Magnificent and capacious....the book took my sleeve and like the ancient mariner would not let go....a breathtaking saga." ( Los Angeles Times)
"[Watson] comes across as nothing short of iconic....it's difficult to find another figure in American literature so thoroughly and convincingly portrayed." ( Publishers Weekly)
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Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All became an instant classic upon its publication. Critics and fans alike fell in love with the voice of 99-year-old Confederate widow Lucy Marsden, one of the most entertaining and loquacious heroines in American literature. Lucy married at the turn of the 20th century, when she was 15 and her husband was 50. If Colonel William Marsden was a veteran of the "War for Southern Independence", Lucy became a "veteran of the veteran" with a unique perspective on Southern history and Southern manhood.
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Dated.
- By edie butler on 04-06-21
By: Allan Gurganus
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Dessa Rose
- A Novel
- By: Sherley Anne Williams
- Narrated by: Ruby Dee
- Length: 2 hrs and 56 mins
- Abridged
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This is the story of an extraordinary friendship between two remarkable women, both caught in the shadow of slavery in the 19th-century South. One is an escaped black slave under sentence of death; the other is white, yet committed to end the horrors her neighbors accept as a matter of course. Ruby Dee's passionate and sensitive readings gives a poignant sense of reality to this magnificent novel of courage, daring and love.
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One Star from Perfect
- By Marty on 01-26-18
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The Bastard
- The Kent Family Chronicles, Book 1
- By: John Jakes
- Narrated by: Marc Vietor
- Length: 19 hrs and 8 mins
- Unabridged
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Set against the colorful tumult of events that gave rise to our fledgling nation, this novel of romance and adventure introduces Phillipe Charboneau. The illegitimate son of an English nobleman, Phillipe flees Europe and, as Philip Kent, joins the men who set our course for freedom. The Bastard is the first volume in the Kent Family Chronicles, a series of novels that details one family's journey in the early years of the American nation.
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An Amazing Tale
- By will on 11-06-13
By: John Jakes
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Cataloochee
- By: Wayne Caldwell
- Narrated by: Scott Sowers
- Length: 12 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Debut novelist Wayne Caldwell's Cataloochee -a rich, vivid, arresting work beginning at the dawn of Reconstruction - sprawls across the succeeding generations like the vast green mountains of its rural North Carolina setting. Best-selling author Charles Frazier calls it "a brilliant portrait of a community and a way of life long gone, a lost America." This enthralling saga evokes the full color spectrum of mountain life, from lights to darks and every shade in between.
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Love It!
- By Cynthia J. Hakansson on 02-27-09
By: Wayne Caldwell
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The Resurrection of Nat Turner, Part 1: The Witness
- By: Sharon E. Foster
- Narrated by: John McLain
- Length: 13 hrs and 21 mins
- Unabridged
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Leading a small army of slaves, Nat Turner was a man born with a mission: to set the captives free. When words failed, he ignited an uprising that left over 50 whites dead. In the predawn hours of August 22, 1831, Nat Turner stormed into history with a Bible in one hand, brandishing a sword in the other. His rebellion shined a spotlight on slavery and the state of Virginia and divided a nation's trust. Turner himself became a lightning rod for abolitionists like Harriet Beecher Stowe and a terror and secret shame for slave owners.
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Purchase and Download NOW!
- By Giselle E Ambursley on 03-03-16
By: Sharon E. Foster
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Hell at the Breech
- By: Tom Franklin
- Narrated by: Larry Pine
- Length: 13 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1897, an aspiring politician is mysteriously murdered in the rural area of Alabama known as Mitcham Beat. His outraged friends - mostly poor cotton farmers - form a secret society, Hell-at-the-Breech, to punish the townspeople they believe responsible. The hooded members wage a bloody year-long campaign of terror that culminates in a massacre where the innocent suffer alongside the guilty.
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Pull up them breeches, son
- By W Perry Hall on 02-04-14
By: Tom Franklin
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Andersonville
- By: MacKinlay Kantor
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 37 hrs and 13 mins
- Unabridged
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Acclaimed as the greatest novel ever written about the War Between the States, this searing Pulitzer Prize-winning book captures all the glory and shame of America's most tragic conflict in the vivid, crowded world of Andersonville, and the people who lived outside its barricades. Based on the author's extensive research and nearly 25 years in the making, MacKinlay Kantor's best-selling masterwork tells the heartbreaking story of the notorious Georgia prison where 50,000 Northern soldiers suffered.
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Worthy of the Pulitzer
- By Gillian on 03-22-15
By: MacKinlay Kantor
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Gone with the Wind
- By: Margaret Mitchell
- Narrated by: Linda Stephens
- Length: 49 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, Margaret Mitchell's great novel of the South is one of the most popular books ever written. Within six months of its publication in 1936, Gone With the Wind had sold a million copies. To date, it has been translated into 25 languages, and more than 28 million copies have been sold. Here are the characters that have become symbols of passion and desire....
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not to miss audible experience
- By dallas on 12-08-09
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North and South
- North and South Trilogy, Book 1
- By: John Jakes
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 30 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
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Two strangers, young men from Pennsylvania and South Carolina, meet on the way to West Point.... Thus begins this brilliant novel of antebellum America, spanning three generations and chronicling the lives and loves of two great family dynasties. The Hazards and the Mains are brought together in bonds of friendship and affection that neither jealousy nor violence can shatter - until a storm of events sunders the nation and brings the cataclysm of war!
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Captivating novel of the Civil War
- By 9S on 01-12-13
By: John Jakes
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High Country Bride
- By: Linda Lael Miller
- Narrated by: Jack Garrett
- Length: 13 hrs and 17 mins
- Unabridged
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One ranch. Three sons. Only one will inherit...and on one condition. Tired of waiting for his sons to settle down, Arizona-territory rancher Angus McKettrick announces a competition: the first son to marry and produce a grandchild will inherit Triple M ranch. Now, three distinctly different, equally determined cowboys are searching high and low for brides.
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good book but not what was in the summary:
- By Zandra Zavalza on 01-30-16
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A Must Listen
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A Must Listen
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Beautiful Narration of a Wonderful Story!
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It both entertains and teaches.
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I give this book five stars because it is truly an
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Would you believe that one man championed the cause of Native Americans with Leonard Peltier, helped migrant farm workers with Cesar Chavez, traveled to Nepal, hiked the Himalayas, explored Africa and founded The Paris Review? It's true, and it's the life of Peter Matthiessen. Listen to entrancing travel tales and real life anecdotes from this author of At Play in the Fields of the Lord and the National Book Award-winning The Snow Leopard.
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A fantastic glimpse of Matthiessen
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In the dawning light of a late-summer morning, the people of lower Manhattan stand hushed, staring up in disbelief at the Twin Towers. It is August 1974, and a mysterious tightrope walker is running, dancing, leaping between the towers, suspended a quarter mile above the ground. In the streets below, a slew of ordinary lives become extraordinary in bestselling novelist Colum McCann’s stunningly intricate portrait of a city and its people.
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Wish I'd chosen the book, rather than audio.
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From her home on the California coast, Dalva hears the broad silence of the Nebraska prairie where she was born, and longs for the son she gave up for adoption years before. Beautiful, fearless, tormented, at 45 she has lived a life of lovers and adventures. Now, Dalva begins a journey that will take her back to the bosom of her family, to the half-Sioux lover of her youth, and to a pioneering great-grandfather whose journals recount the bloody annihilation of the Plains Indians.
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As a woman, I can finally appreciate Jim Harrison with this book.
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Norman Mailer's Pulitzer Prize-winning and unforgettable classic about convicted killer Gary Gilmore now in audio. Arguably the greatest book from America's most heroically ambitious writer, The Executioner's Song follows the short, blighted life of Gary Gilmore who became famous after he robbed two men in 1976 and killed them in cold blood. After being tried and convicted, he immediately insisted on being executed for his crime. To do so, he fought a system that seemed intent on keeping him alive long after it had sentenced him to death.
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Pulitzer-winner spoiled by numskulled narration
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Out in the desert in a place called the Palace, a young man tends to a dying soul, someone he once knew briefly, but who has haunted the edges of his life. Juan Gay—playful raconteur, child lost and found and lost, guardian of the institutionalized—has a project to pass along. It is inspired by a true artifact of a book, Sex Variants: A Study in Homosexual Patterns, which contains stories collected in the early twentieth century from queer subjects by a queer researcher, Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was then co-opted by a committee, her name buried.
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meh
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In Jason Mott’s Hell of a Book, a Black author sets out on a cross-country publicity tour to promote his bestselling novel. That storyline drives Hell of a Book and is the scaffolding of something much larger and more urgent: Mott’s novel also tells the story of Soot, a young Black boy living in a rural town in the recent past, and The Kid, a possibly imaginary child who appears to the author on his tour.
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Four Stars for Content, One More for...
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The Nix
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It’s 2011, and Samuel Andresen-Anderson—college professor, stalled writer—has a Nix of his own: his mother, Faye. He hasn’t seen her in decades, not since she abandoned the family when he was a boy. Now she’s re-appeared, having committed an absurd crime that electrifies the nightly news, beguiles the internet, and inflames a politically divided country. The media paints Faye as a radical hippie with a sordid past, but as far as Samuel knows, his mother was an ordinary girl who married her high-school sweetheart.
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Is There An Editor In The House??
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By: Nathan Hill
What listeners say about Shadow Country
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Overall
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- AV
- 08-09-12
A Novel Meant to Be Listened To
If you could sum up Shadow Country in three words, what would they be?
Compelling country storytelling.
What other book might you compare Shadow Country to and why?
Absolam, Absolam, by William Faulkner, as a tale of the deep south after the civil war.
Have you listened to any of Anthony Heald’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, but I think I should.
Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?
In three volumes, read in five parts, there are too many.
Any additional comments?
This if the first audio book I believe I would NOT prefer reading over listening. Heald is extraordinary in his ability to bring to life deep southern speech patterns, male and female, and the author's amazing choices of words and story-telling ability. Every bit makes me feel as though I'm sitting on a rural home's porch, listening to a colorful story teller.
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2 people found this helpful
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Overall
- James Gerber
- 02-22-11
A Great Yarn
I whole-heartedly agree with the positive reviews of this book. It is a wonderful story of strong characters during a wild time in south Florida history. One of the reviews said that part three could stand on its own as a novel. That is true, but it is so much richer if you have the background from parts one and two. The language is pretty rough, but is entirely in character.
One note about the narration, though: if you primarily listen in the car, be prepared to adjust the volume frequently. The narrator tends to let his voice drop to a whisper, then comes back full-force in the next phrase, so you end up increasing the volume to hear the soft parts, then turning it down again to protect your hearing. The recording engineer should have used more audio compression to keep the dynamic range to a comfortable level.
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- THRIFTY LAWYER
- 12-17-14
couldn't wait for it to end
this is basically a compilation of 3 books in one edition. the first is told interview-style from the perspective of numerous residents of the ten thousand islands detailing the events leading up to the death of Edgar Watson, the second picks up where the first left off and is told from the perspective of Edgar Watson's son, and the third is a first-person account by Edgar Watson filling us in on what really happened. first, while the story is fundamentally good, hearing parts of it three times over really dragged. second, the many characters interviewed in the first section are all very similar in dialect, tone, etc, and it's impossible in an audio book to keep track of everyone and figure out why they're important. the narrator is good and with his voice and accent paints a clear picture of west Florida, but there seems to be a problem with the volume in which the book was recorded, and I had to turn the volume on my player up to the maximum to hear. the prose is nice and the book is well-written. all in all I might recommend this as a regular book but not as an audio book.
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Overall
- John
- 05-02-09
Engrossing, Rich and Powerful
Shadow Country is a superb book. From what I understand, it is a compilation of a trilogy surrounding the life and death of Edgar J Watson, a real-life legendary character of the American south around the late 1800's to his death in 1910. As in a trilogy, this book is comprised of three distinct parts, beginning at the end with Watson's death at the hands of a vigilante mob. The rest of the book is back story; with the first part describing Watson as told by the various people who knew him (many of these people participated in his murder/execution). The second part is told after the fact by Watson's beloved younger son, Lucius, who devotes his life in vain to uncovering the real truth about the life and death of his father. Was he the loving father Lucius knew or the reputed murderous monster?
Parts one and two, painting a vivid picture of the man and history of the region, raise as many questions as it provides answers until finally, part three, where autobiographically told by Edgar Watson himself everything is revealed. Part three, could easily stand alone as a complete novel.
This book is wonderfully written and masterfully read. It has everything; rich descriptions of the landscapes, people, and history, and plausible dialog complete with the dialects of the antebellum and postwar south. It pulls no punches when it comes to slavery and racism, so if you are not willing to hear the "N" word contextually used, be duly warned.
Peter Matthiessen brings the places and time to life. His description of the landscape after a hurricane is perfect. Perhaps living in South Florida made the story more real for me. For example, I have been to Arcadia many times. To this day it is not hard to imagine it as the old-west saloon-filled cattle town of a century past. Certainly there is a lot of history of the Everglades and man's attempts to rape this last frontier.
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46 people found this helpful
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Overall
- Walter
- 03-18-09
Real Florida
Dropped me into old Florida like Marjorie Stoneman Douglas (River of Grass). As a Florida historian I was gripped by the eyes of frontier protagonists as they weaved their lives and the prejudice terror that emitted from each page. The author really did his homework. Put on your seatbelt on this one. You are in for a ride.
South Florida, March 2009
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10 people found this helpful
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- Marie
- 12-21-11
Matthiessen's Best yet
If you could sum up Shadow Country in three words, what would they be?
No other aurhor has ever captured the flavor of the area and the people of Florida's forgotten southwest corner s Peter Matteissen has done in his latest novel. Killing Mr. Watson was a tour de force and this novel goes well beyond that. The area alive in every line and the story builds and builds to its stunning conclusion.
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- Ellen
- 04-22-14
Truly Outstanding Story and Narration
This is an epic achievement done complete justice by the superb narration by Anthony Heald. Frankly, he is the best narrator I have ever heard and will purchase more of his titles. The story itself is transcendent: so heartbreakingly sad yet such a complete picture of a man, a time and the devastating effect one man can have on so many others, including himself.
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- Ceedeedee
- 12-28-11
Was he, or wasn't he?
Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?
This writer easily challenges Elmore Leonard for king of dialogue; this long selection flies by. Totally believable characters in hardship and life lessons few of us knows. American history that no one else is going to tell you in a way that you FEEL it. The reader is very much a part of why you want the Audible experience rather than written word. He is old enough and has paid enough attention to Americans of all stripes that he brings you right in to Shadow Country. Enough of my 72 years have been spent around people who are a few steps farther along that I can recognize them and me, even though we are educated and wealthy in comparison,I love this and will listen again to favorite events in the lives of the folks I have become familiar with.
What other book might you compare Shadow Country to and why?
I know no other experience like Shadow Country.
Have you listened to any of Anthony Heald’s other performances before? How does this one compare?
No, but I will.
If you could take any character from Shadow Country out to dinner, who would it be and why?
Any of the women, to give them hope of change comin'.
Any additional comments?
no
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- Sara
- 10-14-15
You Can Feel Florida On Each Page
This powerful book evokes Florida in a way very few other books have done for me. Up until now my favorite writer to have really captured the sense of place of Florida was Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Matthiessen's writing picks apart and examines the story from multiple angles with no stone left unturned. There is so much detail, so much feeling reduced exactingly to words that at times it boggled the mind. I felt transported to the swampy waterways and could feel the heat.
I listened piecemeal--dividing the book up into sections and listening to each separately. After a section I would pause and go off and read several other books--taking a break. Even listening this way I was drawn back and kept returning to hear more. It took me a good long while to finish the book. I might have preferred that the volume was left in its three parts as first published. I know Matthiessen wanted it published as a whole in one book--but it was very long.
I agree with another reviewer that listening is better than reading with this book. Heald's narration captures the essence and feeling of the time in which the story took place. It was beautifully read. Worth the time.
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35 people found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 04-27-09
Not your average "story"
If you're looking to while away some time with a pleasant or exciting "story," this is NOT the book for you. Matthiessen analyzes and re-constructs the larger-than-life figure of E.J. Watson is great detail and from many points of view. Some mysteries about Watson's life are revealed, but ultimately, many questions remain. The pioneering "settling" of the Everglades is seen for what it was: a raping and destruction of what made it unique and beautiful. It stands as an object lesson of how lands and countries are settled or subjugated. Racial injustices continue this theme of "to the victor belong the spoils." This book is filled to overflowing with characters, history, and the raw dialogue and life of another century. The narrator does a great job of delineating the myriad of different characters. A trip into the Everglades today reveals that the character of E.J. Watson still lives in the memories and folklore of present-day Florida. That was where I first heard about him, and since then I've waited for Audible to carry this book. A GREAT read, but definitely not for a reader looking only for entertainment.
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13 people found this helpful