THIS WAS A selection for our book club. I had not heard anything of it, and was not looking forward to reading it, actually, but it turned out to be excellent.
Basic storyline: it's the late 90s, and rancher/novelist Dan O'Brien is dealing with the failure of his marriage and the never-ending challenges of raising cattle on the Great Plains: keeping them fed, making sure they survive the winter, managing the damage they do to the natural environment, the recurring cycles of debt. After an eerie encounter with a buffalo, described in the opening pages, he decides to switch to raising buffalo. The book follows the story of his converting his operation from cattle ranch to buffalo ranch over the course of year and a half, roughly.
O'Brien is good at presenting the advantages of buffalo-raising. Since bison are native to the prairie, they thrive on it mjuch better than cattle do: they need no supplements to native grasses, they know how to find their own water, they handle the winter well, and need little veterinary intervention. Their meat is actually better for us than beef (less fat, less cholesterol). Their presences actually restores the land rather than compromising it.
What makes the book excellent, though, is not its argument for raising bison, but its novel-like aspects. O'Brien is excellent in narrating an episode (his first buffalo auction, his driving a trailer full of buffalo during a snowstorm), in conjuring character (his hired hand Erney, real estate maven Dick, neighbor Stan), in relating the history of those who farmed (and failed) on his land before he acquired it. He is good at evoking the landscape and its seasons, even better at evoking the people who live on it.
A fine book. I'm going to try grilling ground buffalo tonight.
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