The Times' Colette Bancroft today on 1A: One of the reasons he found Watson's story so irresistible, Mr. Matthiessen told me, was that it was "a metaphor for the Florida frontier. It's all there, the racism, the corporate greed, the destruction of the environment, the isolation of the Indian peoples." In the hands of a such a great writer, that picture of Florida's past resonates into the present and future.