The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness - Hardcover

Bass, Rick

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395717582 ISBN 13: 9780395717585

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1997

Synopsis

Three novellas make up a trilogy that focuses on the land, whether it be the dry, difficult world of a Texas range, a winter wilderness, or an ancient ocean buried in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains

About this title

About the Author:

RICK BASS is the author of many acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction. His first short story collection, The Watch, set in Texas, won the PEN/Nelson Algren Award, and his 2002 collection, The Hermit's Story, was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass's stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Two appealing short stories and an exquisite novella from Montana essayist and storyteller Bass (The Book of Yaak, 1996; In the Loyal Mountains, 1995, etc.). The title novella revels in the rugged beauty of bluffs and thickets in Texas hill country, where three generations preserve the family ranch as a haven for wild animals and the wild at heart. The narrator, a middle-aged woman living alone on the ranch with her memories, recalls her formative influences: iron-willed Grandfather, whose battle cry (``the natural history of Texas is still being sacrificed upon the altar of generalization'') was stifled by a stroke, then reemerged when the old man relearned speech using the cadences of birdsong; his Mexican right-hand, Chubb, who was afraid of the dark but a tireless worker and fiercely loyal by day; Father, the county agent, who fought in vain to end overgrazing and protect eagles from his sporting, good-old- boy neighbors; and especially Mother, who died when the narrator was still a girl, but whose limestone-bluff resting place ensured that her presence remained, even as the family dwindled one by one. These ties to the past, binding the mother to the daughter and the daughter to the land, prove more durable than any link with potential mates. In ``The Myths of Bears,'' another Texan, Judith, breaks free of the increasing lunacy of her longtime partner, Trapper, outwitting him and enduring winter in the Alaskan wilderness alone, only to be tripped up later by her concern for him; in ``Where the Sea Used to Be,'' an Alabama man breaks away from his cold-blooded rich boss to show a knack for finding oil from the air that makes him legendary, but also introduces him to a rival passion: Sara. As thoughtful and captivating as his previous work: stories that can only increase Bass's reputation as a writer remarkably able to put people in nature in a way that enhances our understanding of both. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0395717582
• ISBN 13: 9780395717585
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 189