Rick Bass

“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...

Black rhinos are not actually black. They are, however, giant animals with tiny eyes, feet the diameter of laundry baskets, and horns that are prized for both their aesthetic and medicinal qualities. Until recently, these creatures were perched on the edge of extinction, their numbers dwindling as they succumbed to poachers and the ravages of civil war. Now their numbers are rising, thanks to a groundbreaking new conservation method from the Save...

A transformative journey written in gratitude to the author's mentors describes his midlife attempt to recapture the passions of his youth, an effort marked by encounters with famous contemporaries and a variety of colorful mishaps.

To quote the Los Angeles Times: "Impelled by a profound love of the land, the ten stories in In the Loyal Mountains are a reminder that American literature draws its unique strength from a powerful sense of place." In this luminous collection, Rick Bass firmly establishes himself as a master of the short story, with tales that embrace vibrant images of ordinary human life and exuberant descriptions of the natural world.

"For acclaimed writer and environmental activist Rick Bass, it can be wearying to dwell relentlessly upon the broken, the fragmented, the dead and dying and doomed to extinction. Activism is a necessary part of the environmental movement, but so is the time-honored celebration of the beauty that inspires us. Spanning his storied career, these new and selected essays attempt to take a brief step to the side, away from lamentation and prescription,...

Roaming across the salt flats and skirting the salt lake Richard a geologist working for an oil company hunts for fossils under the spell of Clarissa the local beauty who plans to use her share of their plunder to get out of small dusty Midland for good. A generation earlier a Depression era couple Max and Marie Omo numbly mines for salt along the banks of the briny lake until the emotional terrain of their marriage is suddenly and irrevocably altered....