<div>“Ambitious and often captivatingly beautiful . . . an extended meditation on the prickly, necessary interrelationship of man and the natural world.” —Kirkus Reviews The first full-length novel by one of our finest fiction writers, Where the Sea Used to Be tells the story of a struggle between a father and his daughter for the souls of two men, Matthew and Wallis—his protégés, her lovers. Old Dudley is a Texan whose religion is oil, and in his fifty years of searching for it in Swan Valley he has destroyed a dozen geologists. Matthew is Dudley’s most recent victim, but Wallis begins to uncover the dark mystery of Dudley’s life. Each character, the wildlife, and the land itself are rendered with the vivid poetry that is that hallmark of Rick Bass’s writing. “Sometimes, reading this book, I wished I could step into its pages and physically inhabit the world Rick Bass creates. At its best, Where the Sea Used to Be is that powerful, that seductive.” —The Washington Post “In the beauty of his language and the grandeur of his story’s scope, Bass has created both powerful fiction and a parable for the situation in which the human race finds itself . . . Read it to discover anew the power good fiction can have.” —SFGate “One of the country’s premier sources of poetic, nature-oriented short fiction . . . The particular pleasure of reading a Rick Bass novel is the total immersion you feel in the hypnotic lyricism of his prose . . . a novel of inestimable beauty.” —The Austin Chronicle</div>

Where The Sea Used To Be

<div>The Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana is one of the last great wild places in the United States, a land of black bears and grizzlies, wolves and coyotes, bald and golden eagles, wolverine, lynx, marten, fisher, elk, and even a handful of humans. It is a land of magic, but its magic may not be enough to save it from the forces threatening it now. The Yaak does have one trick up its sleeve, though: a writer to give it voice. In Winter Rick Bass portrayed the wonder of living in the valley. In The Book of Yaak he captures the soul of the valley itself, and he shows how, if places like the Yaak are lost, we too are lost. Rick Bass has never been a writer to hold back, but The Book of Yaak is his most passionate book yet, a dramatic narrative of a man fighting to defend the place he loves.</div>

The Book of Yaak

<div>A prize-winning Montana writer&rsquo;s tribute to &ldquo;a brilliant and mischievous chocolate brown pointer that will transfix anyone who has ever loved a dog&rdquo; (Publishers Weekly). Colter pairs one of America&rsquo;s most treasured writers with our most treasured &ldquo;best friend.&rdquo; Colter, a German shorthair pup, was the runt of the litter, and Rick Bass took him only because nobody else would. Soon, though, Colter surprised his new owner, first with his raging genius, then with his innocent ability to lead Bass to new territory altogether, a place where he felt instantly more alive and more connected to the world. Distinguished by &ldquo;crystalline, see-through-to-the-bottom prose,&rdquo; this interspecies love story vividly captures the essence of canine companionship, and yet, as we&rsquo;ve come to expect from Bass, it does far more (Rocky Mountain News). &ldquo;With an elegant, often erudite flavor to this story,&rdquo; Colter illuminates the heart of life by recreating the sheer, unmitigated pleasure of an afternoon in the Montana hills with a loyal pup bounding at your side (BookPage).</div>

Colter

<div>A &ldquo;splendid&rdquo; novel based on the rise and fall of the Browns, Arkansas siblings who became country music legends, by an award-winning author (Dallas Morning News). Late in 1959, the Brown siblings&mdash;Maxine, Bonnie, and Jim Ed&mdash;were enjoying unprecedented international success, rivaled only by their longtime friend Elvis Presley. They had a bona fide mega hit on their hands, which topped both the country and pop charts and gave rise to the polished sound of the multibillion dollar country music industry we know today. Mesmerized by the Browns&rsquo; haunting harmonies, the Beatles even tried to learn their secret. Their unique harmony, however, was only achievable through shared blood, and the trio&rsquo;s perfect pitch was honed by a childhood spent listening for the elusive pulse and tone of an impeccably tempered blade at their parent&rsquo;s Arkansas sawmill. But the Browns&rsquo; celebrity couldn&rsquo;t survive the world changing around them, and the bonds of family began to fray along with the fame. Heartbreakingly, the novel jumps between the Browns&rsquo; promising past and the present, which finds Maxine&mdash;once supremely confident and ravenous in her pursuit of applause&mdash;ailing and alone. As her world increasingly narrows, her hunger for just one more chance to secure her legacy only grows, as does her need for human connection. Lyrical and nuanced, Nashville Chrome hits all the right grace notes with its vivid evocation of an era in American music, while at its heart it is a wrenching meditation on the complexities of fame and of one family&mdash;forgotten yet utterly unforgettable when reclaimed by Bass&mdash;who experienced them firsthand.</div>

Nashville Chrome

<div>&ldquo;Two appealing short stories and an exquisite novella&rdquo; about the relationship between humans and the natural world around them (Kirkus Reviews). This is a &ldquo;wondrous&rdquo; (GQ) collection of short fiction exploring the subtle interplay between predator and prey, from &ldquo;a literary titan&rdquo; (The New York Times Book Review). In the title story, a woman has returned to live on the west Texas ranch that has been in her family since Texas was a republic. Her mother, who died when she was a child, is buried there; the three men who raised her&mdash;her father, grandfather, and Old Chubb, a Mexican ranch hand&mdash;are gone; and her brother, like herself, is childless. Soon, all that will be left of the family is the land: &ldquo;I suppose the land is all we will leave behind,&rdquo; she reflects. &ldquo;In that way it is both our parents and our children.&rdquo; Land is central to the other tales here as well. In The Myths of Bears, a man tracks his wife through a winter wilderness as she both lures and eludes him. And in Where the Sea Used to Be, an ancient ocean buried in the foothills of the Appalachians becomes a battleground for a young wildcat oilman and his aging mentor. &ldquo;Rick Bass is a force of nature. [This book] is a force of language. As a reader, a third thing comes to mind: gratitude for a good story that allows us to ponder what is above and what is below.&rdquo; &mdash;Terry Tempest Williams &ldquo;What&rsquo;s exhilarating about Rick Bass&rsquo;s stories is that they show every hallmark of &lsquo;the natural&rsquo;&mdash;that lucid, free-flowing, particularly American talent whose voice we can hear in Twain, Fitzgerald, and Hemingway.&rdquo; &mdash;Chicago Tribune</div>

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The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness

<div>An account of one year in the Yaak Valley wilderness range, by the acclaimed naturalist and memoirist. Beginning with his family settling in for the long northwestern Montana winter, and capturing all the subtle harbingers of change that mark each passing month&mdash;the initial cruel teasing of spring, the splendor and fecundity of summer, and the bittersweet memories evoked by fall&mdash;this is a beautiful evocation of the &ldquo;fauna, flora and folks&rdquo; in this rugged and spectacular landscape (Publishers Weekly, starred review). It is full of rich observation about what it takes to live in the valley&mdash;toughness, improvisation and, of course, duct tape. The Wild Marsh is also poignant, especially as the author reflects on what it means for his young daughters to grow up surrounded by the strangeness and wonder of nature. He shares with them the Yaak&rsquo;s little secrets&mdash;where the huckleberries are best in a dry year, where to find a grizzly&rsquo;s claw marks in an old cedar&mdash;and discovers that passing on this intimate local knowledge, the knowledge of home, is a kind of rare and valuable love. Bass emerges not just as a writer but as a father, a neighbor, and a gifted observer, uniquely able to bring us close to the drama and sanctity of small things, ensuring that though the wilderness is increasingly at risk, the voice of the wilderness will not disappear. &ldquo;A work of wonder, praise, and thanksgiving for all the marvels of nature, where every aspect is connected and every process has its place. Bass, grounding his book in science well, takes the facts and transforms them, as a musician transforms musical notes, into a work of great beauty. This walk through a year is a walk through the author&rsquo;s soul, filled with passions, dreams, fears, and the exuberance of Walt Whitman.&rdquo; &mdash;School Library Journal, starred review &ldquo;Whether the topic is a forest fire in his front yard or the excitement of the first tiny cheerful glacier lilies in spring, Rick Bass is a stirring companion on the trail that leads west from the Walden Pond of Henry David Thoreau and the Sand County of Aldo Leopold.&rdquo; &mdash;Ivan Doig, author of The Whistling Season</div>

The Wild Marsh

<div>&ldquo;Bass&rsquo;s fiction takes us to the borders of civilization, where we glimpse an untamed world of myth and mystery&rdquo; (Entertainment Weekly). In this &ldquo;moving and self-assured collection&rdquo; of short fiction, enormous pigs charge through the streets and root under houses; a woman runs up and down mountains; children don wolf masks to chase a boy through the woods; and a man remembers his youth in the Texas hill country, when he joined in his uncle&rsquo;s raucous escapades (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Here, the award-winning author of Platte River and other acclaimed works, renowned for his insightful portrayals of people and their interactions with the natural world, &ldquo;expresses his profound love of the wild. His sense of the magnificent and bewildering complexity of life infuses each of the haunting short stories in this strong collection&rdquo; (Booklist). </div>

In the Loyal Mountains

<div>This novel of young men seeking glory in the Republic of Texas is “a surprisingly absorbing rendition of a terrible episode in American history” (The Oregonian). The Diezmo tells the incredible story of the Mier Expedition, one of the most absurd and tragic military adventures in the history of Texas—a country and a state, as Rick Bass writes, that was “born in blood.” In the early days of the Republic of Texas, two young men, wild for glory, impulsively volunteer for an expedition Sam Houston has ordered to patrol the Mexican border. But their dreams of triumph soon fade into prayers for survival, and all that is on their minds is getting home and having a cool drink of water. After being captured in a raid on the Mexican village of Mier, escaping, and being recaptured, the men of the expedition are punished with the terrible diezmo, in which one man in ten is randomly chosen to die. The survivors end up in the most dreaded prison in Mexico. There they become pawns in an international chess game to decide the fate of Texas, and with their hopes of release all but extinguished, they make one desperate, last-ditch effort to escape. “The best literary adventure story I've read since Legends of the Fall. Full of unusual history, exciting events, timely ideas, and stunning wilderness scenery . . . a wonderfully told novel of the human capacity for survival in the face of the very worst that war can do to us.” —Howard Frank Mosher, author of Points North “A vivid, graphic, harrowing tale of wild men and bad blood, a fable universal and timeless in its application.” —Kent Haruf, author of Plainsong “Terrific . . . powerful.” —Los Angeles Times</div>

The Diezmo

<div>A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year: “Uniformly excellent” stories about our relationships with each other and with the treacherous natural world (Publishers Weekly). In the title story, a man and woman travel across an eerily frozen lake—under the ice. “The Distance” casts a skeptical eye on Thomas Jefferson through the lens of a Montana man’s visit to Monticello. “Eating” begins with an owl being sucked into a canoe and ends with a man eating a town out of house and home, and “The Cave” is a stunning story of a man and woman lost in an abandoned mine. Other stories include “The Fireman,” “Swans,” “The Prisoners,” “Presidents’ Day,” “Real Town,” and “Two Deer.” Each is remarkable in its own way, sure to please both new readers and avid fans of Rick Bass’s passionate, unmistakable voice. “Bass focuses a naturalist’s eye not only on the frozen lakes and interplay of predator and prey often found in his work but also on the ebb and flow of human emotions and relationships . . . Thought-provoking and entertaining, these stories move along quickly but continue to resonate long after the reader is done; several have been anthologized in award collections.” —Library Journal “Beautiful in their magical imagery, dramatic in their situations, and exquisitely poignant in their insights, these stories of awe and loss are quite astonishing in their mythic use of place and the elements of earth, air, fire, and water.” —Booklist “Bass puts his talent as a nature writer to terrific use.” —The New York Times Book Review “Bass’s language glistens with the beauty of the landscapes he evokes.” —San Francisco Chronicle Book Review</div>

The Hermit's Story

<div>&ldquo;Stop-in-your-tracks short stories&rdquo; of survival, sorrows, and the power of our connection to the earth (Booklist, starred review). A New York Times Book Review Editors&rsquo; Choice A Rocky Mountain News Best Book of the Year Finalist for the Story Prize At once expertly crafted and undeniably moving, these ten stories deftly explore our immutable connection with nature. The centerpiece of the collection is the arresting title story, in which a woman alone in her mountain cabin confronts a terminal illness. In the equally remarkable &ldquo;Her First Elk,&rdquo; the same character recalls her most memorable and significant hunting experience. Set in locations ranging from Montana to Texas to Mississippi, the remaining stories further illuminate the consequences of our attitudes toward the environment and each other. This masterly collection lays bare the essentials of life with unparalleled passion and grace. &ldquo;Bass captures quiet human truths amidst his astonishing portraits of life in the wilderness.&rdquo; &mdash;People &ldquo;Nature is as much a character in this sterling collection . . . .as are any of the oddly off-center but otherwise endearing people who inhabit it.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly (starred review) &ldquo;Digs deeply into the geology of the human condition . . . highly polished gems.&rdquo; &mdash;Seattle Times &ldquo;One of this country&rsquo;s most intelligent and sensitive short-story writers.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Book Review</div>

The Lives of Rocks

<div>Long considered one of the most gifted practitioners of the short story, Rick Bass is unsurpassed in his ability to perceive and portray the enduring truths of the human heart. Now, at last, we have the definitive collection of stories, new and old, from the writer Newsweek has called "an American classic." To read his fiction is to feel more alive -- connected, incandescently, to "the brief longshot of having been chosen for the human experience," as one of his characters puts it. These pages reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements, and his lush and striking language draws us ineluctably into the lives of these engaging people and their vivid surroundings. The intricate stories collected in For A Little While -- brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery -- have the power both to devastate and to uplift. Together they showcase an iconic American master at his peak.</div>

Rick Bass
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Books By Rick Bass (11 Books)