Where the Sea Used to Be [Hardcover]

Rick Bass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1998

The first full-length novel by one of our finest fiction writers, Where the Sea Used to Be tells the story of a struggle between a father and his daughter for the souls of two men - his proteges, her lovers. Old Dudley is a Texan whose religion is oil, and in his fifty years of searching for it he has destroyed a dozen good geologists, "crushing them to dust by manipulating their own desires against them." His most recent victim is Matthew, his daughter Mel's sometime lover, who grew up in Swan Valley in Montana, where Mel has been living and studying wolves for twenty years. The valley is Old Dudley's albatross. He and Matthew have drilled nineteen dry holes there, and sensing that Matthew is burning out, Dudley sends in a new geologist, Wallis. Seduced by the valley and by Mel, Wallis discovers the dark mystery of Dudley's life, yet he cannot escape the old man's grip. As in all Rick Bass's fiction, both the land and the characters are unforgettable. Swan Valley, connected to the out

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rick Bass has already proved himself to be a master of the short form, producing both stellar fiction (In the Loyal Mountains) and eloquent polemical pieces (The Book of Yaak). The loose and baggy expanse of the novel, however, is new terrain for him. In an Amazon.com interview, Bass described his struggles with Where the Sea Used to Be, which involved 14 years of intermittent labor and thousands of discarded pages. Reading the book, it's easy to see why. Bass's first novel is a massive work. Encapsulating motifs from his entire career, it revolves around an elaborate love triangle (or perhaps quadrangle), the permutations of which would take a short pamphlet to describe. On the most basic level, however, there's Old Dudley, a crusty petroleum geologist; his daughter Mel, who's spent the last two decades studying wolves in Montana's Swan Valley; Matthew, a former protégé of Dudley's; and Wallis, Dudley's current protégé, who he's sent to the valley in search of oil, oil, and more oil.

Given Mel's conservationist bent and her father's expoitative one--not to mention the usual family baggage--it's no surprise that these two are antagonists. There are also Oedipal fireworks galore, as the two younger men alternately resist and succumb to Dudley's long-distance manipulations. But more to the point, Where the Sea Used to Be is a novel about clashing obsessions: personal, spiritual, and environmental. Occasionally this works to the story's detriment, as one character after another speechifies on behalf of his or her bête noir. (The author, too, is guilty on this count, having inserted a number of italicized lectures into the text.) But despite this flaw, and the sometimes creaky machinery of the plot, Where the Sea Used to Be offers an abundance of riches--not the least of them being Bass's patented, time-lapse lyricism: "The moose walked off into the trees--disappeared into the branchy whispers of fir, pine, and spruce, fitting back into the woods like an arrow passing between two ribs. A mist of snow trickled from one of the branches where the moose had gone--it caught the moonlight and glittered as it fell--and then there was no sign. The woods sealed back in around her." Nobody is more persuasive when it comes to describing a place, along with the animals--human and otherwise--who occupy it.

From Library Journal

Astonishingly, Bass?the author of 11 noteworthy titles?is only now debuting his first novel, the story of an oil-hungry magnate and his contentious daughter.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1 edition (June 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395770157
• ISBN-13: 978-0395770153
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,532,514 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A big rich book to savor, February 12, 2001

By 

Lynn Adler - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Sea Used to Be (Hardcover)

Rick Bass has pulled off a masterpiece in his first novel about man or machine versus nature. The story operates on two levels - the contest between four central characters - a sort of King Lear and his daughters, except in this case one daughter and two proteges who are stand-ins for sons, geologists/oil drillers/naturalists. The other level is the backdrop of Big Sky country, Montana. The book is also big, long, and challenging, and sometimes hard to get your mind around. For those who want their stories in small doses and to get to the point fast, this book is not for you. It demands a leisurely pace, which makes even I who am a patient reader sometimes squirm. The only flaw with regard to length are some of the Dudley passages on the formation of the earch, which form a story within a story. A lot of that I think could have been trimmed back. Some if it, and especially, Dudley's personal story is integral to the novel. Yet, you will do yourself a disservice if you skip over the lush and lengthy descriptions of the main story. There is a reason for it. The setting and the characters are intertwined. The setting shapes the characters and the characters shape the setting. Could Bass or someone else have a written a shorter book on the same topic? Probably, but the effect would have been lost. Some say it is pretentious. I disagree. This is a book of magnitude and scale, in other words, an epic and it needs size. To use an overworked metaphor, I believe the story has to brew likely good coffee or decant like fine wine. The story is ultimately satisfying on all levels if you allow it.

14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Brrrr, December 7, 1999

By 

nancy mccarthy (Boynton Beach, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Sea Used to Be (Hardcover)

I have never known people to moan endlessly in their sleep night after night. Nor, have I ever known people to lose consciousness for weeks at a time in a depressive slumber. And, I have never met a man who would haplessly give up all wordly conveniences to live in a frozen tundra with another man's lover all for an overly possessive boss. O'kay, so maybe I have never been a wolf tracker in Northwest Montana in dead winter or a driven geologist, but still... Rick Bass' novel is an ambitious saga about an uncoventional love triangle, well actually its a square between naturalist daughter, possessive tycoon father, and two (2) young geologists in pursuit of fossil fuel in the remote parts of Montana. The scenery is painted very beautifully by Bass and particularly interesting, is his portrayal of the town casket carver, weaving wonderful metaphors between the animals decorating the tombs and the townspeople for whom they are built. Unfortunately, Bass' rich descriptions of the Montana winter are not nearly as convincing as the psychology that plays out between the characters. We just never really understand what drives these people except perhaps for Old Dudley(the seminal capitalist), whose primal need is to control everything in his grubby path. Mel, Old Dudley's daughter, is portrayed as an eminently rugged woman content to follow her life's work of tracking wolves. However, this same strong willed individual takes in her father's proteges without thought and argument allowing them to complicate her simple life. It just isnt believable. The cold these people endure day in and day out is just not believable. In short, the characters and their lives, are just not believable. Perhaps raw poetry would better suit this author, paint me a rich snowy landscape not an empty protagonist.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars So vivid!, December 16, 2005

By 

Wes "Wes" (SE Ohio) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Where the Sea Used to Be (Paperback)

As someone obsessed with the mountains and mountain culture, I simply can not get enough of the nature writings of Rick Bass, especially "Where the sea used to be." The geological terminology that peppers the book and the premise of protecting the Yaak from drilling makes the story much more understandable and interesting to me, as a petroleum engineering student. No matter what one's perspective is regarding environmental policy, the attatchment to The Valley that Bass imbeds in every reader is unavoidable.