Download or read book The Book of Yaak written by Rick Bass and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 1997-09-15 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Winter written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1991 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Describes winter in a remote valley of inhabitants, the last valley in Montana without electricity.
Download or read book Brown Dog of the Yaak written by Rick Bass and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rick Bass's dog Colter is the brown dog of the Yaak who charges through the mountain valleys following the scent of game. Bass gives a history of his years with Colter as a way of understanding what is intuitive in his quest to create art.
Download or read book For a Little While written by Rick Bass and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2016-03-01 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2016 Story Prize A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice 100 Recommended Books of 2016 -- San Francisco Chronicle "A literary titan...Bass is, hands down, a master of the short form, creating in a few pages a natural world of mythic proportions." -- New York Times Book Review 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.
Download or read book Why I Came West written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2009-07 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author discusses the attraction he feels to the landscape of the Yaak Valley in extreme, northwest Montana where he has lived for twenty-one years, and meditates on what drew him to the place, the challenges he faced moving and adjusting to life in a climate very different than he had known before, and how the place has changed him.
Download or read book The Traveling Feast written by Rick Bass and published by Little, Brown. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed author Rick Bass decided to thank all of his writing heroes in person, one meal at a time, in this "rich smorgasbord of a memoir . . . a soul-nourishing, road-burning act of tribute" (New York Times Book Review). "Exuberant . . . A classic . . . This is a rich bounty of a book." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "A master."--Boston Globe "One of the very best writers we have."--San Francisco Chronicle "Both mythic and intimate . . . A virtuoso."--O: The Oprah Magazine "The beauty of his sentences recalls the stylistic finesse of Cormac McCarthy and Willa Cather."--Chicago Tribune From his bid to become Eudora Welty's lawn boy to the time George Plimpton offered to punch him in the nose, lineage has always been important to Rick Bass. Now at a turning point--in his midfifties, with his long marriage dissolved and his grown daughters out of the house--Bass strikes out on a journey of thanksgiving. His aim: to make a memorable meal for each of his mentors, to express his gratitude for the way they have shaped not only his writing but his life. The result, an odyssey to some of America's most iconic writers, is also a record of self-transformation as Bass seeks to recapture the fire that drove him as a young man. Along the way we join in escapades involving smuggled contraband, an exploding grill, a trail of blood through Heathrow airport, an episode of dog-watching with Amy Hempel in Central Park, and a near run-in with plague-ridden prairie dogs on the way to see Lorrie Moore, as well as heartwarming and bittersweet final meals with the late Peter Matthiessen, John Berger, and Denis Johnson. Poignant, funny, and wistful, The Traveling Feast is a guide to living well and an unforgettable adventure that nourishes and renews the spirit.
Download or read book All the Land to Hold Us written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A masterfully crafted novel of seekers that spans three generations set amidst the harsh terrain of West Texas.
Download or read book Platte River written by Rick Bass and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Available again, an acclaimed collection from an American master that USA Today called “Powerful . . . lyrical, vivid, engaging.” Originally published twenty-five years ago, Platte River is one of the early collections that established Rick Bass’s reputation as a master of the short form and one of the best writers of his generation. It contains three novellas of contemporary America, each informed by the mysteries of nature and the heart. Set along borders, both physical and immaterial, all of the novellas combine a spare but radiant naturalism with an outsize aspiration to folklore or myth. In the title story, a former pro linebacker living a simple, isolated life in the Canadian woods just across the border from Montana struggles with his artist girlfriend’s desire to escape. Invited by his best friend from their college football days to give a talk at the school where the friend now teaches, he flies to northern Michigan. In the class the next morning, after a night fishing party on the Platte River, what he learns brings acceptance, and a kind of salvation. In “Mahatma Joe,” a despairing evangelist living in a valley that was once so wild the people would go naked when the Chinook winds blew, announcing winter’s end, throws his fervor into planting a garden along the river, bringing purpose to the young woman who had camped there. “Field Events,” the most comic of the stories, begins when two athlete brothers spy an enormous, muscled man swimming in the river, hauling a canoe loaded with cast iron. Their plan to train him in the discus meets with complications, when the giant and their older sister find in each other the missing part that neither could articulate.
Download or read book The Lost Grizzlies written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1995 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A search for proof that grizzly bears still live in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado.
Download or read book The Lives of Rocks written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2007-10-17 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Stop-in-your-tracks short stories” of survival, sorrows, and the power of our connection to the earth (Booklist, starred review). A New York Times Book Review Editors’ 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 “Her First Elk,” 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. “Bass captures quiet human truths amidst his astonishing portraits of life in the wilderness.” —People “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.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review) “Digs deeply into the geology of the human condition . . . highly polished gems.” —Seattle Times “One of this country’s most intelligent and sensitive short-story writers.” —The New York Times Book Review
Download or read book The Diezmo written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2006-06-15 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Colter written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2001 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author shares his memories of his favorite dog, Colter, and the diverse ways in which he transformed the author's life, in a look at the dynamic relationship between humans and dogs.
Download or read book The Hermit s Story written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2003-09-18 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Where The Sea Used To Be written by Rick Bass and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2014-06-03 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Wild to the Heart written by Rick Bass and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 1997 with total page 182 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On long weekends, Rick Bass drives away from Jackson, Mississippi, and the job that confines him. His excursions take him to southern rivers, southern swamps, and sometimes to conservation meetings. Through thirteen essays written in a style compared to Thoreau, Muir, and Annie Dillard, Bass records his meanderings in a lyrical exploration of wildness and freedomin nature and in ourselves. Illus.
Download or read book In the Loyal Mountains written by Rick Bass and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 1995 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ten stories on people and nature. Fires is on a woman long-distance runner, The Legend of Pig-Eye is on a boxer in training, and The Valley is on a man's love for a valley. By the author of Platte River.
Download or read book Fiber written by Rick Bass and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 57 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A acclaimed nature writer offers a moving portrayal of the attempt to save the pristine Yaak Valley of Montana through a fictional overview of the personalities and steps necessary to build the concern and active support necessary for preservationist action. UP.
