SOURCE: Review of In the Loyal Mountains, by Rick Bass. Publishers Weekly 242, no. 18 (1 May 1995): 43.

In the following review, the critic positively evaluates In the Loyal Mountains, claiming that there is a solid thematic cohesion to the collection.

In this moving and self-assured collection of 10 stories [In the Loyal Mountains] (some of them linked, others not), Bass (Platte River) captures two very different regions of the country. A handful of the selections are set in an isolated Montana valley, a place inhabited by cougars and bears and the occasional pedestrian who gets pulled off the road and mauled. Others are set in the deep South, including “The Legend of Pig-Eye,” in which a Mississippi boxer recounts the bizarre training rituals of his instructor, which include outswimming a crazed horse named Killer. All of the stories are told in the first person, and all the narrators are men. Often looking...