Where the sea used to be

by Rick Bass

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. Matthew 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 Wallis, a new geologist. 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.