From his bid to become Eudora Welty's lawn boy to the time George Plimpton offered to punch him in the nose, lineage has always been important to Rick Bass. Now at a turning point --- in his mid-50s, with his long marriage dissolved and his grown daughters out of the house --- Bass strikes out on a journey of thanksgiving. His aim: to make a memorable meal for each of his mentors, to express his gratitude for the way they have shaped not only his writing but his life. The result, an odyssey to some of America's most iconic writers, is also a record of self-transformation as Bass seeks to recapture the fire that drove him as a young man.

The pages of FOR A LITTLE WHILE reveal men and women living with passion and tenderness at the outer limits of the senses, each attempting to triumph against fate. Rick Bass provides searing insights into the complexity of family and romantic entanglements. The intricate stories collected here --- brimming with magic and wonder, filled with hard-won empathy, marbled throughout with astonishing imagery --- have the power both to devastate and to uplift.

NASHVILLE CHROME hits all the right grace notes with its vivid evocation of an era in American music, while at its heart it is a wrenching meditation on the complexities of fame and of one family who experienced them firsthand.