The Hermit's Story: Stories

Front Cover
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Sep 18, 2003 - Fiction - 195 pages
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
 

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
Back Matteer
180
Back Cover
181
Spine
182
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About the author (2003)

RICK BASS’s 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, and his memoir, Why I Came West, was a finalist for a National Book Critics Circle Award.

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