For a Little While: New and Selected Stories

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. Table of Contents Selected Stories (pp 3 - 342)     Wild Horses     In Ruth’s Country     Red Fish     The Watch     The Legend of Pig-Eye     The History of Rodney     Fires     Field Events     The Hermit’s Story     The Fireman     Swans     Elk     Pagans     The Canoeists     Goats     Her First Elk     Titan     The Lives of Rocks New Stories (pp 343 - 468)     How She Remembers it     The Blue Tree     Lease Hound     The River in Winter     Coach     An Alcoholic’s guide to Peru & Chile     Fish Story Acknowledgments