Edgar J. Watson In The Everglades

This novel is based on Edgar J. Watson who lived until 1910 and farmed in the Everglades. In the novel, Watson and others tell their versions of events that involve Watson, forming their own versions of what Watson may or may not have done. Even though Watson was never brought to trial for Starr’s murder, he left Arkansas and set off for the Everglades, where he raised pigs and supported himself off the land. Even with all of the doubt in Arkansas, Watson seemed to fit in as a welcome member of the Everglades, and he settled in to begin farming in Chatham Bend. The Everglades was very different from life in Arkansas. There were hundreds of tiny islands, most of which were barely above water, and were uninhabitable. Watson was a man who boasts
Yes, there is a recurrent subject of meditation for the narrators is the question of how much white blood someone has, and in what mixture with what other strains. Even though Sarah Hamilton, one of the narrators, remarks that "this whole darn foolishness of blood will be the ruin of this country," she too proceeds to catalogue her forebears and their nationality. Killing Mister Watson is narrated by many different types of characters — ten in all, plus a fictionalized "historian" — who act in the "story" they relate but also stand outside as commentators and reflectors. They include Henry Thompson, Watson's foreman and devoted surrogate son; Richard Hamilton, a Calusa Indian midwife and patriarch of one of the county's most prolific families; Bill House, one of Watson's executioners; and Carrie Watson, his daughter, who exhibits changing perceptions and loyalties, and is an exemplar of ineffective and well-dressed feminine morality. In these narrators, Matthiessen has assembled a cast who, through a series of narrative "interviews," provide access points into the multiplicities of the Watson