SOURCE: Review of The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, by Rick Bass. Kirkus Reviews (15 September 1997): 1402.

In the following review, the commentator praises The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness, calling the stories appealing, thoughtful, and captivating.

Two appealing short stories and an exquisite novella [The Sky, the Stars, the Wilderness] from Montana essayist and storyteller Bass (The Book of Yaak, 1996; In the Loyal Mountains, 1995, etc.).

The title novella revels in the rugged beauty of bluffs and thickets in Texas hill country, where three generations preserve the family ranch as a haven for wild animals and the wild at heart. The narrator, a middle-aged woman living alone on the ranch with her memories, recalls her formative influences: iron-willed Grandfather, whose battle cry (“the natural history of Texas is still being sacrificed upon the altar of generalization”) was stifled by a stroke, then reemerged when the old man relearned speech using...