From a "literary titan" short stories in which "the greatest joy . . . is the belief . . . in the goodness of all things on this earth, including us" (New York Times Book Review).
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."
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.
"Heartbreaking, strangely elegiac yet hopeful stories." —Boston Globe
"A profoundly satisfying collection . . . Bass's prose is charged with a lyrical intensity rare in American fiction." —Chicago Tribune
"Bass is a keen and relentless observer of woods and prairies and beasts of every variety. . . . His best stories bring life and death within a hair's breadth of each other . . . They display clarity and heart and moral vision, and glow like a well-stoked wood stove." —New York Times
"Glorious . . . Extraordinary . . . Heartbreaking . . . Transcendent . . . Bass is an acknowledged master of the short story." —San Francisco Chronicle
" A treasure trove." —Seattle Times
"Remarkable." —Joyce Carol Oates