Synopses & Reviews
Late in 1959, the Brown siblings—Maxine, Bonnie, and Jim Ed—were enjoying unprecedented international success, rivaled only by their longtime friend Elvis Presley. They had a bona fide megahit 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 haunting harmonies, the Beatles even tried to learn their secret. Their unique harmony, however, was only achievable through shared blood, and the trios perfect pitch was honed by a childhood spent listening for the elusive pulse and tone of an impeccably tempered blade at their parents Arkansas sawmill.
But the Browns celebrity couldnt 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 promising past and the present, which finds Maxine—once supremely confident and ravenous in her pursuit of applause—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—forgotten yet utterly unforgettable when reclaimed by Bass—who experienced them firsthand.
Review
“Rick Bass deftly weaves the true and fictional into a wonderful novel of the rise and fall of one of country musics greatest acts—the Browns. Its as lyrical, plaintive, and true as the best country music, which is exactly what the Browns made. Nashville Chrome is a great celebration of the Browns, and above all, a terrific read.”
—Thomas Cobb author of Crazy Heart and Shavetail
Review
The Wild Marshis Rick Basss most mature, full account of life in the Yaak and a crowning achievement in his celebrated career. It begins with his family settling in for the long Montana winter, and captures all the subtle harbingers of change that mark each passing month the initial cruel teasing of spring, the splendor and fecundity of summer, and the bittersweet memories evoked by fall.
It is full of rich observation about what it takes to live in the valley ruggedness, improvisation and, of course, duct tape.The Wild Marshis also tremendously poignant, especially when Bass 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 Yaaks little secrets where the huckleberries are best in a dry year, where to find a grizzlys claw marks in an old cedar 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.
Classic in form, the journal of a year in an old loved place,The Wild Marshis a lovingly-wrought chronicle from a writerly soul that has found its spot in the world: the one-of-a-kind Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana. Sure-footed in his approach whether topic is a forest fire in his font 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.”Ivan Doig, author ofThe Whistling Season
"[T]he author anchors his celebration of natures elegant order with his rhapsodic relationship to the wild marsh outside his writing cabin, and the uncompromising wilderness it represents."STARRED,Publishers Weekly
"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 authors soul, filled with passions, dreams, fears, and the exuberance of Walt Whitman."Library Journal
"A welcome installment in Basss ongoing place-centered autobiography."Kirkus
"A wonderfully poetic, evocative homage to a wilderness most of us will never see."STARRED,Booklist
Review
"Nature is as much a character in this sterling collection of 10 short stories." Publishers Weekly, Starred
Review
"Rick Bass puts his talent as a nature writer to terrific use . . . his ability to map the inner lives of his characters is equally impressive." --Don O'Keefe The New York Times Book Review
"Nature is as otherworldly as a line of bright birds frozen stiff, and as prosaic as a patch of grass, in this uniformly excellent collection . . ." Publishers Weekly, Starred
"Probably no American writer since Hemingway has written about man-in-nature more beautifully or powerfully than Rick Bass." --Bryan Woolley Dallas Morning News
Review
'\"Bass is never better than when he is writing from deep within his passion to save the Yaak.\" The Los Angeles Times
\"A passionate, informative recounting of one man\'s attempt to save a very special piece of the natural world\" Dallas Morning News'
Review
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, and even a handful of humans. But its magic may not be enough to save it from the forces threatening it now. In The Book of Yaak Rick Bass captures the soul of the valley itself, and he shows how, if places like the Yaak are lost, so too will be the human riches of mystery and imagination."Bass is never better than when he is writing from deep within his passion to save the Yaak." The Los Angeles Times
"A passionate, informative recounting of one man's attempt to save a very special piece of the natural world" Dallas Morning News
Review
"I loved the Diezmo. . .I loved the calm of the narrator even in the presence of death." --Terry Tempest Williams
"Rick Bass is one of our best writers. The Diezmo is further proof; a vivid, graphic, harrowing tale of wild men and bad blood, a fable universal and timeless in its application." --Kent Haruf
"Once in a long while there is a book I find myself buying again and again, because I have so many friends who should read it; this year, that book is without question The Diezmo. What a woeful and dusty and beautiful adventure; what a great and simple tale! For Mr. Bass writes with eyewitness precision, clear humility, and best of all, the generosity of the forgiven. The Diezmo extends his already considerable reach, and is the best of his many fine works." --Leif Enger
"Rick Bass's The Diezmo is 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, The Diezmo is 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
"[The Diezmo] contains many exquisite passages that will give the reader pause. . .A masterpiece." --Patty Lamberti Playboy
"Bass plays the English language like a stringed instrument...a ripping good tale." --Mike Shea, Texas Monthly
"Terrific...powerful...the lean beauty of Bass' prose...[is] gripping." --Adam Hill Los Angeles Times
"Compellingly effective." --H.W. Brands The Washington Post
"Succinct, evocative, and painterly...a surprisingly absorbing rendition of a terrible episode in American history." --Elizabeth Grossman The Oregonian
Review
"One of this country's most intelligent and sensitive short-story writers." The New York Times Book Review
Review
"about striving to find something lost in ourselves, something that can be supplied only by solitude and wilderness and the presence of creatures more powerful and self-assured than we are" The Washington Post
Review
The Lost Grizzlies chronicles the ongoing search for proof that a small number of grizzly bears still lives in the isolated mountain wilds of southern Colorado. Rick Bass turns his considerable talents to an evocation of wilderness beauty and the history of human encroachment that may, or may not, have wiped out the last of these massive, solitary bears from their southern range."about striving to find something lost in ourselves, something that can be supplied only by solitude and wilderness and the presence of creatures more powerful and self-assured than we are" The Washington Post
Review
"Hauntingly beautiful." Boston Globe
"Writing of this quality creates a stillness in the mind." Time Magazine
Review
GQ called the three short novels in this collection "wondrous." A woman returns to live on her family's west Texas ranch . . . a man tracks his wife through a winter wilderness . . . an ancient ocean buried in the foothills of the Appalachians becomes a battleground for a young wildcat oilman and his aging mentor. Here is Bass at his magical, passionate, and lyrical best."Hauntingly beautiful." Boston Globe
"Writing of this quality creates a stillness in the mind." Time Magazine
Synopsis
In 1959, the Brown siblings were the biggest thing in country music. Their inimitable harmony would give rise to the polished sound of the multibillion dollar country-music industry we know today. But when the bonds of family began to fray, the flame of their celebrity proved as brilliant as it was fleeting. Masterfully jumping between the Browns' once-auspicious past and the heartbreaking present, Nashville Chrome is the richly imagined story of a forgotten family and an unflinching portrait of an era in American music. In his "breath-catching, mythic and profoundly American tale of creation, destruction and renewal" (Kansas City Star), Rick Bass mines quiet truths and draws poignant portraits of lives lived both in and out of the limelight.
Synopsis
The Wild Marsh is Rick Basss most mature, full account of life in the Yaak and a crowning achievement in his celebrated career. It begins with his family settling in for the long Montana winter, and captures all the subtle harbingers of change that mark each passing month the initial cruel teasing of spring, the splendor and fecundity of summer, and the bittersweet memories evoked by fall.
It is full of rich observation about what it takes to live in the valley ruggedness, improvisation and, of course, duct tape. The Wild Marsh is also tremendously poignant, especially when Bass 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 Yaaks little secrets where the huckleberries are best in a dry year, where to find a grizzlys claw marks in an old cedar 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.
Synopsis
In this searching memoir, Rick Bass describes how he first fell in love with theWest as a landscape, an idea, and a way of life. Bass grew up in the suburban sprawl of Houston, attended college in Utah, and spent eight years working as a geologist in Mississippi before packing up and heading west in pursuit of something visceral and true. He found it in the remote Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana, where despite extensive logging, not a single species has gone extinct since the last Ice Age. Bass has lived in the Yaak ever since, a place of mountains, outlaws, and continual rebirth that transformed him into the writer, hunter, and activist that he is today. The West Bass found is also home to deep-rooted philosophical conflicts that set neighbor against neighbor disputes that Bass has joined reluctantly, but necessarily, to defend and preserve the wilderness that he loves.
Synopsis
Rick Bass's new collection contains a broad range of characters and settings: the title story concerns a woman recovering from cancer; "Pagans" tells, at forty years' distance, of a girl and two boys -- one of whom was in love with her -- and the dangerous games they played; in "Her First Elk," a woman reflects on her first elk hunt and on her memories of her father and two brothers, now all dead. These stories, distinguished by their maturity, are narrated by men and women with compelling life tales. Filled with Bass's hallmark lean and beautiful prose, they are further proof of his mastery of the short fiction form.
Synopsis
The Hermits Story is Rick Bass's best and most varied fiction yet. In the title story, a man and a woman travel across an eerily frozen lakeunder the ice. The Distance” casts a skeptical eye on Thomas Jefferson through the lens of a Montana mans 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.” Some of these stories have appeared in The Best American Short Stories, but for many readers, they wont even be the best in this collection. Every story in this book is remarkable in its own way, sure to please both new readers and avid fans of Rick Basss passionate, unmistakable voice.
Synopsis
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.
Synopsis
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.
A great crossover book with appeal for high school students. It will also interest readers of westerns and historical fiction.
Synopsis
In this poignant look at the thirty-year journey of one of our countrys great naturalist writers, Rick Bass describes how he fell in love with the mystique of the West--as a dramatic landscape, as an idea, and as a way of life. Bass grew up in the suburban sprawl of Houston, and after attending college in Utah he spent eight years working in Mississippi as a geologist, until one day he packed up and went in search of something visceral, true, and real. He found it in the remote Yaak Valley of northwestern Montana, where despite extensive logging not a single species has gone extinct since the last Ice Age.
Bass has lived in the Yaak” ever since, and in Why I Came West he chronicles his transformation into the writer, hunter, and environmental activist that he is today. He explains how the rugged, wild landscape smoothed out his own rough edges; attempts to define the appeal of the West that so transfixed him as a boy, a place of mountains and outlaws and continual rebirth; and tells of his own role as a reluctant activistsometimes at odds with his own neighborsunwilling to stand idly by and watch this treasured place disappear.
Rick Bass is the author of many acclaimed books of nonfiction and fiction, including The Lives of Rocks, The Diezmo, and Winter.
Synopsis
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..
Synopsis
This book is a classic celebration of winter in a remote Montana valley.
Synopsis
A gut-wrenching adventure, The Diezmo tells the story of one of the most absurd and tragic military adventures in American history. In the early days of the Republic of Texas, two young men, barely sixteen years old and wild for glory, impulsively volunteer for a military expedition assigned to patrol the Mexican border. After being captured in a raid on the Mexican village of Mier, the men of the expedition are sentenced to the grisly diezmo, in which a random selection by bean lottery condemns one man in ten to death. The imprisoned survivors make a desperate last-ditch bid for freedom -- with tragic results.
Synopsis
Colter was the runt of the litter, and Rick Bass took him only because nobody else would. Soon, though, Bass realized he had a raging genius on his hands, and he raided his daughters' college fund to send Colter to the best schools. Colter could be a champion, Rick was told, but he'd have to be broken, slowed down. Rick "could no more imagine a slowing-down Colter than a slow-motion bolt of lightning in the sky," and instead of breaking Colter he followed him. Colter led him into new territory, an unexplored land where he felt more alive, more intimately connected to the world, than he'd ever been before. In the course of telling us Colter's story, Rick Bass also tells us of his childhood fascination with snapping turtles and dirt, and of the other animals - including people - that have shaped his life. COLTER is an interspecies love story that vividly captures the relationship between humans and dogs. Like all of Bass's work, it is passionate, poetic, and original.
Synopsis
Rick Bass's third novel dramatizes three real-life 1950s era country singers from Arkansas who produced a unique and eerie tempered harmony--the Nashville Sound--that for a brief period made them the biggest thing in country music.
Synopsis
"Bass creates
a slice of music history from the ground up, from the backwoods and front porches all the way to Elvis." —
Los Angeles Times 1959: the Brown siblings are the biggest thing in country music. Their inimitable harmony will give rise to the polished sound of the multibillion-dollar country music industry we know today. But when the bonds of family begin to fray, the flame of their celebrity proves as brilliant as it is fleeting. In this arresting novel, acclaimed author Rick Bass draws poignant portraits of their lives, lived both in and out of the limelight. Masterfully jumping between the Browns once auspicious past and the heartbreaking present,
Nashville Chrome is the richly imagined story of this forgotten family and an unflinching portrait of an era in American music. "An
empathic, breath-catching, mythic and profoundly American tale of creation, destruction and renewal." —
Kansas City Star "Splendid . . . Rick Basss best." —Dallas Morning News
About the Author
RICK BASSs fiction has received O. Henry Awards, numerous Pushcart Prizes, awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, among others. Most recently, his memoir Why I Came West was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.
Table of Contents
Contents The Hermits Story · 1 Swans · 19 The Prisoners · 41 The Fireman · 51 The Cave · 74 Presidents Day · 90 Real Town · 122 Eating · 135 The Distance · 141 Two Deer · 161