SOURCE: A review of Platte River, in Christian Science Monitor, March 8, 1994, p. 13.

In the review of Platte River that follows, Walker applauds Bass's definition of characters by emotional awareness in natural and somewhat mythically real settings.

Imagine a man so muscular he can lift up a car, throw a discus 300 feet, and carry a cow on his shoulders. A character in Rick Bass’s new book, Platte River, accomplishes these feats. But in his seventh work of fiction, the author—who some consider one of America’s most promising—has undertaken a task no less Herculean: gripping contemporary fiction by the trunk and shaking its branches. Bass bends the code of realism to which most of his colleagues adhere. The three novellas collected here are full of events that push the envelope of the plausible, and his mythical narrative style harks back to a time when most men...