[Sullivan is an American writer and critic. In the following review of In the Loyal Mountains, he favorably examines Bass's depth of introspection into seemingly mundane, simple human existence and the solace found by humanity in the natural world.]

Those familiar with the fiction of Rick Bass know that he is able to create wonderful characters who live in a world as peculiar as our own. With the publication of In the Loyal Mountains, his latest collection of short fiction, he has once again accomplished this feat, writing convincing stories so natural and intensely human they have the power to make readers wilt with glimpses of truth.

Rick Bass is a prolific naturalist, keenly aware of the inner workings of nature and of the animals who reside in her environs. In this collection, as in his other fiction, Bass takes on perhaps the most bizarre animal of all, the human, and does so with conviction, using elegant language and a quietly authoritative voice as his tools. He does it so well, in fact, that the reader cannot help but feel the sad, brutal, and often mystical weight attached to ordinary life as a human being.

Bass’ insightful awareness of the world often seeps through his stories tranquilly, revealed in light, pseudo-related episodes. By the end of each, however, a feeling of clarity arrives, as if each word of each story were part of a perfect connection, and any fluctuation of his prose would subtract from the completeness of the story. In ““Days of Heaven,” about the life of a caretaker on a luxurious ranch in Montana, the horns of two bull moose become locked during rut combat, and after a month of thrashing, one is dragged to his death by the decomposing corpse of the other. The hiding caretaker looks on as two materialistic tycoons strip the healthy corpse of its meat in the still of the night. The caretaker, like the great gray owl that visits him, gains a quiet sense of self-possession in his ability to wait in simple observance, realizing that sometimes it’s better to feign simplicity. “Maybe,” he thinks, “if I sit very still, they will just go away.”

In the world of Rick Bass, an entire town partakes in roadkill barbecues, potluck-style. Mysterious graves appear in uninhabited mountains. Drunk Halloween revelers wear antlers on their heads and ski behind a truck, examining their lives with the purity of shamans. Brook trout are blasted away by a ravenous little boy wielding a shotgun. A hermitish, ghost-town couple make love by the light of fireflies placed in jars that surround their four-poster bed. A young boy is routinely strung up and beaten by a group of bullies, yet finds refuge in the catfish, tadpoles, frogs, and other bayou critters contained in the solace of his parents’ home.

In virtually every story, Bass enables the protagonist to dig deep into his surroundings, finding sanctuary in the natural world. Mother Nature is a cruel and beautiful character, respected and adored by some, groped and molested by others, always shining a light of tidiness and order on the jumbled confusion of the human experience. Seen side by side with her, the human species seems a clan of sloppy angels, misguided and deserving of sympathy, yet somehow redeemed by uniqueness and by its struggle to endure.