The Lives of Rocks
Stories
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
“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
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nature is as much a character in this sterling collection of 10 short stories as are any of the oddly off-center but otherwise endearing people who inhabit it. Bass writes with concern about the environment (Caribou Rising), and that same passion infuses his fiction (The Hermit's Story). In "Titan" a man recalls an awesome and awful day in his boyhood when freshwater rivers and streams, engorged by sudden heavy rains, surged into the ocean off the Alabama coast, stunning saltwater fish so they could be scooped up by the thousands. The teenage boys of "Pagans" squeeze inside a diving bell to plunge into a river so polluted it bursts into flame; in "Fiber," a former writer and environmental activist gathers deadfall trees and, as the "log fairy," sneaks the best onto the trucks of other wildcat loggers so they'll cut down fewer trees. And in the elegiac title story, a geologist weak from cancer treatments relies on children from a rigidly fundamentalist family for winter wood; they are happy to help, until she teaches them that the Earth is millions of years old. These graceful stories are connected through Bass's invocation of elemental forces, but at the same time each is deliciously distinct.
