SOURCE: LeMonds, James. Review of Platte River, by Rick Bass. English Journal 83, no. 7 (November 1994): 105-06.

In the following review, LeMonds praises Platte River, commenting that Bass is one of the finest American writers today.

I picture Rick Bass huddled in front of his wood stove in the Yaak Valley of Montana, writing with gloves on in the dead chill of winter. Maybe he's just back from the Dirty Shame Saloon, headquarters to the Valley's thirty residents and the home of Dirty Burgers and Shameful Fries. An expatriate of sorts, Bass lived in Utah, Arkansas, and Mississippi before giving up on malls and subdivisions and settling on the isolation of the Yaak. It is a story of restlessness and discovery which sweeps like a chinook wind through the three novellas in his fine new book, Platte River.

While place dominates his nonfiction, most recently in Winter and The Ninemile...