RaveThe Los Angeles TimesWatson is at once a real man in a rough world and a figure cut from legend (some of which he encouraged). Ultimately, he represents the American conquest of the frontier, which this novel proves once and for all was not a pretty or romantic enterprise or one accompanied by fairness or justice … Such a book requires a vivid and convincing world, and Matthiessen – who knows the truth of place as well as any writer – gives us an effulgent setting here, the edge of edge, the raw and ravishing Everglades deep in Florida as the 19th century turned … Finally now we have these books welded like a bell, and with Watson's song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate. He is a killer, but he has our ear.
