The Lives of Rocks

rick bass

A compilation of short fiction includes the title story about a woman's recovery from cancer, as well as "Pagans," a retrospective about the dangerous games played by a girl and two boys in their youth, and "Her First Elk," in which a woman recalls her first elk hunt.

Genres short storiesfictionnatureliteratureamericanenvironment

211 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1,2006

Literary awards

the story prize,

This edition

Format: 211 pages, Hardcover
Published: January 1, 2006 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 9780618596744
ASIN: 0618596747
Language: English

About the author

rick bass

Rick Bass was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Houston, the son of a geologist. He studied petroleum geology at Utah State University and while working as a petroleum geologist in Jackson, Mississippi, began writing short stories on his lunch breaks. In 1987, he moved with his wife, the artist Elizabeth Hughes Bass, to Montana's remote Yaak Valley and became an active environmentalist, working to protect his adopted home from the destructive encroachment of roads and logging. He serves on the board of both the Yaak Valley Forest Council and Round River Conservation Studies and continues to live with his family on a ranch in Montana, actively engaged in saving the American wilderness.

Bass received the PEN/Nelson Algren Award in 1988 for his first short story, “The Watch,” and won the James Jones Fellowship Award for his novel Where the Sea Used To Be. His novel The Hermit's Story was a Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year in 2000. The Lives of Rocks was a finalist for the Story Prize and was chosen as a Best Book of the Year in 2006 by the Rocky Mountain News. Bass's stories have also been awarded the Pushcart Prize and the O. Henry Award and have been collected in The Best American Short Stories.