In the 1890s Ed Watson came to the Florida wilderness known as the Ten Thousand Islands. Rumours about his violent past and ungovernable temper accompanied him and the islanders soon learned to respect and to fear him. In time he became the most successful man in the islands. The first novel in Peter Matthiessen s acclaimed Watson trilogy, this powerful book builds a portrait of its complex central character through the multiple voices of those who knew him. Through the shifting, changing narratives of people like Watson s own daughter Carrie, a plume hunter called Bill House and the Sheriff Frank Tippins, Matthiessen drives his story relentlessly forward to a bloody and violent conclusion. Based on his researches into the real-life figure of Watson, he has produced a novel that brilliantly conveys the fetid and unforgiving landscape of the Florida swamplands and the character of a man who came to dominate them.