Back when Elvis Presley was a scrawny teenager with dreams of becoming a gospel singer, he spent two years on tour with the Browns, a trio of siblings whose gorgeous harmonies would result in a series of country hits during the 1950s, culminating in "The Three Bells," which topped both the country and pop charts in 1959, selling more than 1 million copies.

In "Nashville Chrome," Rick Bass tells the story of the Browns' rapid rise and long fall. It's a novel, not a biography — what Bass, in his acknowledgments, calls an "attempt to portray the emotional truths" of the Browns' journey. Despite missed notes, imperfect pitch and some overused lyrics, Bass largely succeeds.

Maxine, Jim Ed and Bonnie Brown were born in rural Arkansas during the Great Depression, and "Chrome" opens by chronicling their early life, in passages echoing but ultimately transcending familiar tropes from a slew of country music biopics featuring home as a haven from a heartless world beset by hard times, hard work and hard drinking.

It helps that Bass is not only an experienced fiction writer but also a renowned naturalist, whose lifetime of close observation of the natural world results in numerous evocative passages in which he makes a scene pop with life — whether he is taking us on an enchanted canoe ride with Bonnie and Elvis through the Arkansas swamps or past the bedraggled trailer dwellers on the outskirts of Memphis.

Bass contrasts Bonnie — who ultimately chooses domestic bliss over a life on the road — and the gnawing ambition eating away at Maxine, who always wants more than she has.

Bass dwells longest on Maxine, repeatedly shifting from the story of the Browns' rise in the 1950s to a regret-filled Maxine, who remembers the Browns as being even more popular than they were and wonders when they'll finally receive the recognition they deserve.

Initially moving, these sections of "Chrome" featuring the older Maxine grow repetitious, as Bass repeatedly sounds the same themes: fortune is fickle and fame is fleeting. Bass also throws in a long sequence featuring a 12-year-old prodigy who, while making a documentary of Maxine, is stuffed full of brainy ruminations that no 12-year-old boy could possibly have.

The novel is also marred by a number of portentous, purple passages about fate and destiny that are so abstract — and so dependent on forced metaphors — that it's no surprise to see Bass repeat them; the Browns pass through too many curtains, cross too many rivers and reach too many peaks. All of which proves, yet again, that the novel says most when it preaches least.

When Bass relies on his well-honed ability to re-create what he sees rather than telling us what it means, he winds up conveying twice as much about where the Browns came from — and about what we risk losing, in our music and in ourselves, in our relentless quest for more when we already have enough.

"Nashville Chrome"

by Rick Bass; Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 256 pages, $24