Les bisons de Broken Heart

by Dan O'Brien

Quand Dan O'Brien s'installe dans le ranch de Broken Heart, il réalise son rêve : vivre au pied des terres indiennes de Sitting Bull. Mais, en un siècle, les Grandes Plaines ont été stérilisées par l'agriculture et l'élevage bovin. Pour rétablir l'écosystème originel de ses terres, O'Brien imagine l'impossible : élever des bisons dans leur milieur naturel... Sur les pas de Jim Harrison, Dan O'Brien nous offre une ode au Grand Ouest américain.

Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Nature, Animals, Book Club, Environment, Biography

432 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Dan O'Brien was born Daniel Hosler O'Brien in Findlay Ohio on November 23, 1947. He attended Findlay High School and graduated in 1966. He went to Michigan Technological University to play football and graduated with a BS degree in Math and Business from Findlay College in 1970 where he was the chairman of the first campus Earth Day. He earned an MA in English Literature from the University of South Dakota in 1973 where he studied under Frederick Manfred. He earned an MFA from Bowling Green University (of Ohio) in 1974, worked as a biologist and wrote for a few years before entering the PhD program at Denver University. When he won the prestigious Iowa Short Fiction in 1986 he gave up academics except for occasional short term teaching jobs. O'Brien continued to write and work as an endangered species biologist for the South Dakota Department of Game Fish and Parks and later the Peregrine Fund. In the late 1990s he began to change his small cattle ranch in South Dakota to a buffalo ranch. In 2001 he founded Wild Idea Buffalo Company and Sustainable Harvest Alliance to produce large landscape, grass fed and field harvest buffalo to supply high quality and sustainable buffalo meat to people interested in human health and the health of the American Great Plains. He now raises buffalo and lives on the Cheyenne River Ranch in western South Dakota with his wife Jill. Dan O'Brien is the winner of the Iowa Short Fiction Award, two National Endowment for the Arts Grants for fiction, A Bush Foundation Award for writing, a Spur Award, two Wrangler Awards from the National cowboy Hall of Fame, and an honorary PhD from the University of South Dakota. His books have been translated into seven foreign languages and his essays, reviews, and short stories have been published in many periodicals including, Redbook, New York Times Magazine, FYI. New York Times Book Review.

Reviews

[Dawn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buffalo for the Broken Heart is Dan O’Brien’s account of his reckoning with the ongoing futility of cattle ranching on the Great Plains in South Dakota. He adopts 13 orphaned buffalo babies he refers to as the original Gashouse Gang—including Peatry and Curly Joe, whose little buffalo personalities I was able to catch a glimpse of through Dan’s observations of their buffalo behavior. We read about Dan’s efforts to build a herd that his land can sustain, but as importantly to Great Plains ecology, a herd that can sustain and improve the land. We learn, along with Dan, the differences between cattle and buffalo and their relationship with the land. And, we get a glimpse of history—the almost total decimation of the original Great Plains buffalo, where the survivors landed, the misguided notions behind the Homestead Act, i.e., east coast and midwest notions of land management transplanted to the Great Plains. We learn about buffalo fencing, and the economics of cattle and buffalo ranching. This is at turns a sad and sweet, anxious and hopeful testament to one man’s life on the Great Plains. He takes us on literary side trips with chapters devoted to the locals past and present, neighbors, the reintroduction of peregrine falcons after their almost total destruction by DDT, plains psychology, the cycle of life, etc. While it seems I’ve thrown everything but the kitchen sink into this review, there’s still so much more. This is a book with great heart. It is rich.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A beautifully written book about rancher and writer Dan O'Brien converting his cattle ranch to a ranch for bison (or, as they are popularly called, buffalo). As he states it, he's restoring life to his ranch in the Black Hills by bringing bison back to his land for the first time in 150 years. O'Brien had found that he was in a losing struggle to make ends meet with cattle ranching. After helping a neighbor at his buffalo roundup, he decided to bring thirteen bison calves to his ranch, the Broken Heart. It's a story about learning about and working with the great animal that had once numbered in the millions on the Great Plains. It's also a personal story--in particular, I enjoyed reading about O'Brien's helping to restore peregrine falcons to the wild. And it's a story about life on the Plains, not an easy life at the best of times for the people who live there. And these are certainly not the best of times for those who live there.

[Sharon Huether · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buffalo for the Broken Heart is a true account of Dan O'Brien's life on an old cattle ranch in the Black Hills for South Dakota.
When Dan acquired the ranch there had been cattle raised on it with not much success.
Dan found out about raising Bison. He started out with a few caves. They thrived on the native grasses.

Present day, Dan has started harvesting a few Bison with great success. He made his loan payments. Life is good for another year.

An enjoyable read, very poetic and descriptive of the calm beautiful land around him.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

I bought this book on sale and at first thought it was just an interesting story, but as I finished it, I was almost crying at the author's highly principled stand of starting a buffalo farm in South Dakota as an apology to the land for more than a century's degradation of the northern Great Plains. Besides writing a fascinating book, Dan O'Brien, a novelist and nonfiction author, has made a courageous effort to restore the Great Plains to a level of sustainability that they've never had since the mid-1800s. Although O'Brien started as a cattle rancher, he became quickly convinced that raising cattle on the Great Plains was just an industrial scheme to exhaust the land and consume its original denizens for profit. It was what caused the Dust Bowl: cattle farming in the Mountain Zone destroyed the natural evolutionary result of millennia that had been established by the wild prairie and enormous herds of buffalo interacting with each other. He's trying to establish in a small way a return to the original ecology of the land.

He is a man with an idealistic soul who is admirable for his dedication and his long-term vision to undo some of the worst aspects of industrial society and live in harmony with nature as it has been for millennia.

This is a book that just makes you feel good, knowing there are people out there like O'Brien working on behalf of regenerating the planet. He is a brilliant writer and a remarkable man, and you can support him by buying his buffalo meat at www.wildideabuffalo.com.

After reading this book, I feel much more heartened about the future of the planet.

[Bob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: Part memoir, part nature-writing, this book describes the story of a cattle rancher who hits bottom, and makes the transition to herding buffalo for economic and ecological reasons.

Dan O'Brien grew up in my home state near Findlay, Ohio and even holds a degree from Bowling Green State University in northwest Ohio. He has traveled a long way from the flat, rich farming land of northwest Ohio to the plains of South Dakota. Along the way, he has written novels and worked as a wildlife biologist who helped reintroduce peregrin falcons to the Rocky Mountains. Eventually he bought the Broken Heart ranch on the Great Plains of South Dakota, and like so many around him, tried to make cattle ranching work.

This book describes those efforts, and the losing struggle to make cattle ranching viable. The book alternates between his efforts to use the range land in an ecologically thoughtful way, the economics of the cattle industry that worked against him, and the attempts of others to make a go of things on this land before him. He hits rock bottom when his wife leaves and the bottom drops out of the market for beef. About this time, he encounters a buffalo on the road, and then begins to talk with others who have turned to raising this creature which lived on these plains until nearly exterminated.

He helps out at a buffalo roundup on another ranch and comes home with thirteen young buffalo. And so begins the story of how he and his ranch hand Erney convert the Broken Heart to a buffalo ranch and the "wild idea" they come up with to circumvent the typical feed lot and meat packing industry to provide buffalo meat as it was eaten by the people of the Plains for thousands of years. Along the way, he continues to narrate the stories of the people around him, including the suicide of the son of a Native American family living next door to him, and the redemptive experience of allowing the husband to shoot the first buffalo harvested on the land. This story was beautifully narrated, both in the description of what it meant for the neighbor, and the almost mysterious way the buffalo bulls came to their hunter. I won't say more because you must read this in context to fully appreciate it.

O'Brien writes in the tradition of ecological writers of place going back to Aldo Leopold, Louis Bromfield (Pleasant Valley, his narrative of restoring Malabar Farm near Mansfield, Ohio), Wallace Stegner, who also wrote of life on the Great Plains, and Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson. Some of his best writing in this book comes in his observations of how buffalo just "fit" the ecology of the Great Plains:

"Was the increase in bird life on the ranch a partial result of a different, evolutionarily more compatible kind of grazing? Did the buffalo's way of moving quickly from one part of the pasture to another affect the grass more positively than the wandering of domestic livestock? Was the entire matrix of the ranch's ecosystem improved by the simple conversion back to large herbivores that had evolved to live here? In my heart I was coming to believe that the answer to all these questions was yes. I wanted to shout it to the skies, but I had learned long before that when profound questions are asked of the heart, the answers are best kept to yourself" (p. 168).

The concluding part of the book narrates the beginnings of The Wild Idea Buffalo Company. The big idea was to kill buffalo at the peak of their development on the range, fed on the range grasses and not artificially fattened on feed lots (destroying the beneficial qualities of lean buffalo meat) and killing them in their natural habitat without the trauma of slaughterhouse. As you can see from the web link above the company has continued to grow and you can buy from them. The website describes Wild Idea this way:

"The Wild Idea Buffalo Company is the leading provider of grass-fed, naturally-raised buffalo meat in the United States. All the buffalo (also called bison) meat we sell is antibiotic and hormone free, 100% grass fed, non-confined, free-roaming and humanely, field-harvested. Ours is the best gourmet meat you can buy on-line and have delivered to your home. No other red meat is better tasting, better for you or better for our planet."

This book was a birthday gift from my wife, along with Dan O'Brien's sequel, Wild Idea. She knows my love of writers like Wendell Berry and Wallace Stegner, and heard about this book, and O'Brien's story on public television and it truly was a wonderful gift and leaves me looking forward to the sequel. And you can look forward to a review in weeks to come!

[M. Sarki · Rating 5 out of 5]

https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/bu...

This book was a great find for me, and credit goes to writer Jim Harrison for turning me onto Dan O’Brien. His name popped up in one of Harrison’s essays found in his great food and travel book The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand. That collection is of course much more than a foodie’s book and covers more landscape than any of us are likely to ever tramp in a lifetime. I could never eat nor drink nor walk the miles Jim Harrison managed to engage with in his time on earth. Nor will I ever have the number of interesting friends and acquaintances the infamous recluse had. That is what is so great about reading good books, finding out about more writers and new places to travel in our minds. O’Brien and Harrison had breakfast together in the local diner which would in itself been great entertainment. Even O’Brien’s book title Buffalo for the Broken Heart is a dandy and provides more feeling than is generally achievable in our common discourse.

...the human desire to improve upon mother nature, to second-guess evolution continually reared its self-important head…

Dan O’Brien was desperate to make ends meet, to find a way to get his struggling cattle ranch back on its feet. He took a chance on these noble ancient beasts and in the process we all received an education on the storied history of the Black Hills. Change is hard for most all of us and cowboys are no exception. Outsiders are what most of us are considered when we attempt to do things differently than our predecessors. Buffalo naturally belong to this land, and that truth is hard to stomach when faced with the reality that our prior countrymen managed to annihilate almost six million buffalo in order to conquer the western grasslands and turn it into vast cattle ranches (most of them failing).

...I was spending too much time thinking about my future and my past. On those chilling October nights before the first snow, I sat alone recalling every mistake I had ever made and wondering if my notion of wild buffalo was just one more. I dwelt on the haunting missteps of my life, and every time I replayed them in my memory the mistakes grew larger and more vivid. Finally, I slipped into a dangerous state of mind: I lost my ability to forget…

O’Brien’s writing is exquisite. His story reads like a novel. But questions remain, as is rightfully so. Fear is ever present, as is the din of suffering. But Dan O’Brien has what Ram Dass calls fierce grace And it is in this suffering with grace in which O’Brien makes his remarkable characters memorable for those who are fortunate to have come in contact with them. I count myself as one of the lucky ones to have read Buffalo for the Broken Heart

[Hymaya · Rating 3 out of 5]

Découvert grâce à la sélection de mars (je crois!) de Victoria pour le Club de lectureMS, je ne regrette pas une seconde ma lecture.
L'auteur est vraiment passionné par sa région d'adoption, les Grandes Plaines américaines, qu'il nous fait découvrir de façon très imagée, et dont il nous explique l'histoire et les enjeux économiques et écologiques mais pas du tout de façon chiante, au contraire!
Il nous décrit son quotidien d'éleveur de bovins, puis de bisons (pour lesquels il développe une vraie affection) avec beaucoup d'humour, sans nous épargner toutefois ses désillusions face à un gouvernement qui encourage une agriculture tout sauf écologique, et même mauvaise pour la santé des futurs consommateurs.

[Claudine · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an amazing true story of a former cattle rancher in South Dakota who abandoned cows and turned to American bison. His story is so inspiring, and now we only buy our buffalo meat from his ranch. He faced down the odds and has now made huge progress in restoring the Great Plains to a more natural state and in promoting buffalo as a better alternative than beef. The movie rights to the story were supposedly purchased by Ed Norton, and it would be wonderful if this story was told on the big screen.

[Carie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Couldn't decide between 2.5 and 3 stars. It's important to make it clear up front that I enjoyed much of this book. I appreciated the author's efforts to adjust his ranching to return bison and repair the ecosystem. I appreciated the author's descriptions of the landscape and the discussion of the emotional toll taken by the stress of ranching. I also appreciated the author's discussion of trying to create meaning in his life --- a task I believe every person struggles with --- even if he did use the same self-aggrandizing ideas that he critiques in his cattle ranching neighbors.

On the other hand I was disappointed with the author's failure establish his credibility. He mentions being a wildlife biologist and makes a variety of claims about the differences in impact on the land between bison and cattle. Yet, he never offers a single citation. He asks the reader to just believe him. More importantly, he offers the reader no options for learning more about those dynamics to which he alludes.

I was also disappointed with the author's discussion of women on the Great Plains. This is a relatively minor part of the book, but is particularly abrasive because he interweaves the stories of men who have been left by women and then draws broad conclusions about all women on the Great Plains. He clearly works quite hard to appear judicious, but if he really wanted to understand the lives of women Great Plains, then he should have started by telling women's stories. He draws the conclusion that life on the plains is economically and environmentally hard, and thus women are a "scarce commodity". I'm not an expert on women on the Great Plains, but I know women who have lived their entire lives in ranching communities on the Great Plains and nearly married into a ranching family myself. Among the women that I know, the reasons that some have left have nothing to do with the harshness of the environment or the economic hardships of ranching. It is because they are treated as a commodity rather than a partner. The women who leave are the ones whose opinions and ideas are not consulted, and are not given the respect/authority/power to improve their lives other than to leave; the ones who are asked to keep a home, while riding out the economic roller coaster ride with their mouths shut; held captive to someone else's decisions. The women I know who are treated as full partners, who are valued for their contributions to the ranch, stay.

Despite his attempts to critique the culture of masculinity on the Great Plains, he tips his hand. He tells the story of one poor lonely man who would go to the local diner with his hired hands. This old man would always buy a pie to take home but would refuse to pay for it until the cute young waitress held his hand. The author then asks us to imagine if the waitress felt all of the tenderness and loneliness in those hands. Having been on the other side of such interactions, I can tell you that what the waitress most likely felt was annoyance that some man could demand physical contact with her before making his purchase --- like her job of serving food had also turned her physical touch into a commodity.

In total, I generally liked the book. My discontentment with some aspects are largely due to my desire for it to be something that it wasn't. I wanted it to either be more scientific about the return of bison to the Great Plains, or I wanted it to be a serious look at life on the Great Plains through the lens of one rancher's decision to start ranching bison. In the end, I enjoyed the book, but I felt like it was a weak compromise between the two things I would have preferred.

[Fayette · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a well written book about a Great Plains rancher who switches from cattle to buffalo. I gave it only 3 stars because the writing is a little drier than I like and there was quite a lot of writing about equipment and fence building. The chapter that describes the almost complete obliteration of buffalo in less than a decade (after the Civil War) was fascinating, and his explanation of why and how cattle have destroyed the Great Plains grasslands and how the habits of buffalo actually nourish the natural grasses, birds and wildlife was worth the read. The book did not want me to start raising buffalo, but I would like to eat more of it.

[Barb Heart · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely the best non-fiction I have ever read. Dan O'brien has not just told you how his rance came about but adds in history, environmental concerns, people's choices, emotional ties, and the real love of the land. his ability to express his appreciation for the buffalo, prairie, & the american indians plight is astounding. I laughed, cried, felt such connection it at times overwhelmed me. A small book with the impact not heard of much......please a Must Read. Reality on the range at its best.

[Repix Pix · Rating 1 out of 5]

¿Dónde está la nobleza en criar animales "casi extintos" para hacer dinero vendiendo su carne?
¿Dónde está la nobleza en cazar sin necesidad o en tener perros en jaulas a la intemperie?
Un libro más donde se presume de la falta de empatía con los animales.

[Britain · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. Dan is an excellent storyteller and it is a mix of history and his experiences told as if you were hearing your grandfather describe something real, but magical.

[Angie Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

You wouldn’t guess that a book about a guy on a lonely Buffalo ranch in South Dakota would be interesting, but this was a beautiful, fascinating book. I’ll have to look for more books by this author. My husband also loved this book and found his writing so easy to read and marvel at the beauty of Buffalo on the prairies.

[Lune · Rating 1 out of 5]

J'ai aimé les 100 premières pages et j'étais même presque sûre d'adorer ce bouquin. Le projet de O'Brien de redonner vie aux Grandes Plaines et y introduisant des bisons qui paîtront uniquement de l'herbe et de vendre leur viande sans les engraisser ou les bourrer d'antibiotique, le tout pour redonner vie à la biodiversité des plaines me paraissaient tout à fait honorable. Ce cow-boy diplômé, amoureux des livres, écrivain et son projet d'élevage "raisonné" me plaisait bien. Puis tout a basculé très vite. L'écriture est très simple et je ne qualifierai pas son autobiographie de "nature writing" puisqu'on y parle plus de logistique et d'argent (et que les quelques passages décrivant les plaines ne sont pas très très beaux). Après la page 150 il n'y a plus UNE page où O'Brien ne parle pas de sommes faramineuses, ne s'inquiète pas pour ses dettes, et les bisons (les sauveurs des Grandes Plaines, n'est-ce pas) se transforment TROP VITE en steaks ambulants. O'Brien se targue d'être un connaisseur et amoureux des oiseaux tout en racontant un épisode de sa vie où il fusille des grands ducs, prédateurs du faucon pèlerin, que des biologistes tentent de réintroduire. Bien qu'il finisse cet épisode avec du regret et range son fusil (pour les grands ducs en tout cas) le passage en question est teinté de critiques légères des défenseurs des animaux "simplets et hypersensibles". Ma colère n'a fait que grandir car je trouve une énorme contradiction entre l'image d'O'Brien, son projet (que je trouve, encore une fois, tout à fais génial!) et sa manière d'écrire et de parler de la nature. Les bisons sont des morceaux de viande ou des dollars sur pattes, qu'on vaccine à coup de fusils à air comprimé en criant "pousse-toi vieille truie" tout en se disant qu'on les tuera en les honorant comme l'ont fait Sitting Bull ou Crazy Horse. J'ai toujours du mal à penser qu'on peux sauver un éco-système le fusil en main et le profit en tête, mais c'est peut-être mon idéal de jeune femme rêveuse. Sentiment mitigé, donc, quant à cette autobiographie de O'Brien, qui à la fois me semble être un mec bien et extrêmement intéressant et à la fois tient des discours qui me semblent contradictoires. Il est vrai que la viande de bison serait très bonne pour nous (moins grasse et moins calorique mais savoureuse) que le bœuf mais je n'arrive pas à me détacher d'un sentiment de livre-promo qui aurait servi à faire de la pub au ranch. L'auteur le dit lui-même, quant le livre est publié aux US, il demande à l'éditeur de mettre le lien de son site dans le livre "pour voir quel impact aurait le livre". Si je suis d'accord avec O'Brien sur beaucoup de sujet (ne pas faire d'enfants, la beauté et la puissance de la nature etc) on ne se retrouve pas du tout quand il s'agit de la place des hommes dans l'équilibre animalier.
Bref, une déception pour moi, qui m'a grincer les dents, pourtant l'univers des ranchs me parle et me rappelle beaucoup de souvenirs.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I actually expected this book to be more of a memoir of sorts. And in a way it was, but largely, it was what the cover said, "restoring life to a black hills ranch." More specifically, restoring buffalo to the land.

Dan O'Brien has owned a ranch in the Black Hills for some time. And he started out with cattle. But like most ranchers in the area, making ends meet with this type of ranching is near impossible. So much so that he has to take jobs elsewhere just to make the mortgage payment. But in addition to being a rancher, O'Brien is also a teacher, ecologist, and so many more roles and he's interested in bringing the wildlife back to the Black Hills after years of overgrazing. One step further has him start raising Buffalo instead of cattle and while he's a novice to begin with, he learns as he goes. This book greatly details how running a sustainable Buffalo farm works for O'Brien and his hardships and triumphs within the first few years.

O'Brien talks about the Buffalo in this book mainly, but there are small snippets of his life. From his sadness over his divorce, his joy in children discovering the buffalo, and just getting along with his neighbors, we can see that overall he's a good person, who's committed to the land. He doesn't hesitate to point out flaws, like the sloppiness of the guy who helps him work the ranch, but he is kind about it and still makes sure to point out all the good things too. And he cares about all the animals. From the falcons he keeps as a hobby, to the bird dogs, to the buffalo themselves, he doesn't mistreat them. He lets nature take it's course and doesn't add any cruelty to it. He lets them be animals.

I'm not going to lie, I did find this book dull at times. Most specifically when he is at auction buying more buffalo. I much prefer his descriptions of them out on the land and the care of them. Even the roundups are kind of exciting, but still not nearly as good as him just describing the land. And it is nice he's still making it work, even selling the meat on the internet through his wildideabuffalo site. He's a believer in not finishing his buffalo in feed lots, and that's admirable. O'Brien does a good job describing the life of a rancher. It's not glorious or romantic and you can tell you really have to love what you're doing to stay in the business.

An inspiring read. I definitely learned a lot more about buffalo than I ever knew before.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart
Copyright 2001
254 pages

Review by M. Reynard 2013

More of my reviews can be found at www.ifithaswords.blogspot.com

[Maeve · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5/5

I learned without noticing I was learning so much about the West, the trials of ranching, and owning your own business especially when the fluctuations of nature don't caring about your bank statement (which was a bit depressing). My favorite tidbits were the differences between cattle and bison, making clear the fundamental ways that bison are not cattle and bison feed upon the land much more naturally. Bison are not picky eaters like cattle; bison herds bunch up in a space and clear it before moving on; bison dig for their food in winter and make hollows for seeping water to drink in summer. Bison stand in the wind, furry and warm, instead of facing away, huddled and cold like cattle.

Other interesting points. The story of the visitor who didn't notice a falcon hunt had already begun was frustratingly/piercingly insightful into how city people unused to open spaces can behave. I really like the statement about how the mythic American being something that doesn't exist in a frontier place that doesn't exist. Also the idea that midwesterners are people who can be honest with anyone but themselves. The not-so-slow evolution of the communal grazing lands into divvied-up fenced pastures. The marketing of cattle products (feed, tools, ice-thawing watering holes) being transferred to bison in a way that denies their authentic adaptedness to the land (as if bison need all the fancy geegaws to survive like cattle do). The wariness of bison pregnant and with newborn calves, not at all tame at that time of year like cattle. The frolicking of young beasts in the snow, lithe and joyful in a way never seen in cattle yearlings.

It just makes sense to reunite the Great Plains with the bison that evolved alongside the native grasses.

[Ignacio Senao f · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una buena zona de América donde ya no hay búfalos debido a su exterminio por millones para vender sus reclamadas pieles. Ahora una grata persona a la vez que inteligente lo arriega todo para repoblarlo y así aprovechar la subida de precio que está teniendo la venta de estos animales. Él lo arriesgara todo por este objetivo, nos contara como aprendió a tratar a este animal y como construir un buen rancho. A la par que se endeuda hasta el cuello.

He echado de menos las descripciones de la naturaleza y sentirme en ella.

[Brandi Welch · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book was well written and I liked the parts where he mentioned the history of the Black Hills, but overall, I’m not the right audience for this book. I couldn’t get into chapter after chapter about installing fences and herding buffalo. It was a difficult read because the author comes across as elitist and arrogant, as if a majority of his neighbors are uneducated morons because they don’t have PHD’s. He often paints his neighbors with a broad, negative brush, even calling them xenophobic. It’s unbelievable that he would speak so harshly about other ranchers, even sharing information about them that was way less than flattering, and think they would still want to associate with him. He probably assumed they were too stupid to read his book anyways.

It was disturbing when he shared about a man peeping at a woman through a window and justified it as the man was just lonely.

The most unbelievable part was what he called a “blue collar show” at the restaurant/ bar when some women got in a fight and he held one woman back. It seemed a bit like he was exaggerating to play on the stereotypes he had been trying to project on the plains natives.

I usually love non-fiction and knowing the author and I grew up in the same area of Ohio, that he went to the university in my hometown, I was hopeful that it would be a good read. This book was definitely not for me.

[Erick Harp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dan captures the life of ranch work with fantastic details and color of the prairie. The Bison and the North American Plains are linked together in a beautiful symbiotic way, as he describes his ranch. As a meat eater and an American who loves the Bison, this was a very entertaining book that gives you a sense of the beauty of the American west and the honest working men and women that continue to live this hard yet satisfying way of life.

[Francesca Mosley · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written
Slightly boring, just because I don’t really enjoy reading about fence posts, but I enjoyed reading about the Buffalo and what he is trying to do with the natural conservation of the South Dakota environment and ecosystem.

[Johnny Keeley · Rating 5 out of 5]

never been a better time to stick my journalism degree in the bin, borrow a massive amount of money from the government and start a buffalo ranch

[Joelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just finished reading this book on the tails of a book about Indigenous people and their connection to the land, and there were so many continued themes. I would love to see more people return to the older, purer ways of agriculture, restoration, conservation and protection. I couldn’t help but think about the movie “The Biggest Little Farm”, as well (if you haven’t seen it, put it on your watch list). This was a lovely read, and I enjoyed learning more about it!

[Jess Popescu · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a good read!! Dan brings the prairie to life, it's fruitfulness and the struggles it brings. He is so honest and authentic in his descriptions and interactions, it really makes you feel as if you're listening to his story while on his back porch looking out at the herd.

This is not my usual type of read, and I normally struggle to finish anything that isnt fantasy or romance based (I love some escapism), however I devoured this book... Now I just need to buy me some buffalo meat!

[Paul Donahue · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very quick and enjoyable read about a rancher in the Black Hills who converts his cattle ranch to buffalo.

O'Brien is very passionate about the Great Plains grasslands, its history, and buffalo, and is equally heartbroken about the way in which the white man has exploited this land in the name of agriculture since our mass arrival in the 1800s. However the way in which he conveys this message is not at all preachy or grating, just an account of one man's feelings and responsive actions.

After a few introductory chapters in which we meet Dan and his ranch hand Erney, get a feel for life -- the fiscal and physical challenges -- on a cattle ranch, O'Brien offers a succinct but mesmerizing history of the Great Plains and buffalo.

Once there were more than 600 million buffalo in North America. But humans gradually began creating a demand for the animals -- not just their meat, but their hides and other body parts as well. In Europe, buffalo tongues were a delicacy. O'Brien goes out of his way to state that the legend of native Americans using every part of every buffalo is a myth. They too left rotting carcasses, but they became far overshadowed by the extent to which whites did it.

A turning point, he says, was in the 1870s when South America ran low on cows, whose hides had been used for leather. At this point manufacturers turned to buffalo and discovered they made even better leather, and soon buffalo were being slaughtered across America in record numbers. They came frightfully close to extinction and, at the lowest point, there were only a few thousand buffalo left on the continent.

O'Brien's move to buffalo was financially very risky, but well worth it to someone who values nature and the way in which a buffalo herd improved, rather than degraded, his grasslands. A bunch of neat anecdotes are woven in: tidbits on falconing, owl hunting, herding buffalo, watching them mingle, midwestern blizzards, building miles of fence, and more history.

Overall a great read and one I imagine would be entertaining for just about anyone. I'm also more interested in buffalo meat, and will be ordering some cuts online from O'Brien's "Wild Idea" Buffalo Company.

[Mackay · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars.
Somewhere in the mess that is the Cliven Bundy take-over of the NWR in Oregon, someone mentioned this book. Don't recall the context, but so glad I caught the reference, because this book is all about things near and dear to my heart: restoring the Great Plains ecosystem AND more humane practices of food animal rearing.

O'Brien is a novelist as well as a rancher, so he knows how to tell a story and keep it interesting, while at the same time imparting information about grassland ecosystems, the broken-hearted history of much homesteading in the West, and useful ideas how to resolve the boom-bust, degraded land cycle out here. This isn't a fairy story - raising buffalo is hard, expensive work, and the range has had over a hundred years of bad management that will take time and effort to repair. But this story is heartening because it shows that ranching AND wildlife can coexist, that people are changing their minds about the food "industry" in a fragile land, that individuals can and do make a difference.

One of the things I really like about O'Brien's ethos is that, when it came time to profit from the bison he reintroduced to his personal range, he could not bring himself to send his free-roaming animals to a feedlot for "fattening" and slaughter. He had to jump through a lot of hoops, but he found a way to produce meat ethically and, yes, humanely, and now I'm going online to see if/how much Wild Idea Buffalo I can afford.

If you're interested in the West, highly recommended.

[Jayme · Rating 4 out of 5]

Buffalo for the Broken Heart is a memoir based on author Dan O’Brien’s decision to switch his South Dakota farm from primarily cattle stock to buffalo. As an environmentalist and a farmer O’Brien has always been concerned about the devastating impact that cattle and wheat farming have had on the Great Plains. In his memoir O’Brien chronicles the details of his life changing decision. After reading the book this city girl is confident that she can now put up a barbed wire fence in a snow storm and discuss intelligently the benefits of eating buffalo instead of beef.

Buffalo for the Broken Heart is a love song to the Great Plains. This book has such a sense of place that I felt the wind blowing in the prairie grass and could see the sun setting on the green pastures on every page. O’Brien has captured the raw beauty of life on a South Dakota farm.

If I have one quibble about the book it is that O’Brien comes across a little smug. But then why can’t he be smug if he’s helping restore a damaged ecosystem and creating a healthy food alternative for meat lovers. The book was written in 2001, so I checked out the web page mentioned in the book www.wildideabuffalo.com and was happy to see that they have grown and are prospering. We are also now on their mailing list. We just might be grilling buffalo burgers for our 4th of July cook out.

[Allison Fetch · Rating 4 out of 5]

This isn't a book that I ever would have picked up on my own, but because my sister passed it along to me I thought I'd give it a try - I'm very glad that I did. A nonfiction memoir, it tells the tale of the author's decision to switch from cattle ranching to raising buffalo. Not only that, it delves into the ecology of the Great Plains and how the running of cattle have destroyed a delicate ecosystem and how the return of buffalo can help to rejuvenate the land and it's inhabitants. White a bit of history is included along with the environmental concerns of the author, plus some of the adventures experienced along the road to raising buffalo. The author is a beautiful writer and very easy to read. I would have given this book five stars but for the fact that I didn't get quite enough involvement with the people the author met along the way. I really wanted to care for them but didn't know quite enough to get emotionally involved. A great book for anyone who enjoys learning about where their meat comes from, as well as anyone who has love and concern for the planet on which we live.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a great book. It is the tale of the author deciding to convert his beloved ranch into a buffalo operation, and the trials and hardships and joys along the way. It is part nature writing, part memoir, part Great Plains history, part ecology, part rancher testimony.

I learned a lot about the Great Plains I did not know and came to further appreciate the synergistic relationship between those grasslands and bison and the destructive role cattle farming has played on the land. I known that mimicking the grazing pattern of bison is best for grasslands and felt a true swelling of the heart, along with the author, when the need to "mimic" was taken out of the equation.

I thought this book was a great addition to the books about agriculture, land use, food, farming, wildlife, and nature that have caught public attention in the last few years.

[Claudia Fett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch is a must read. My friend Dawn W, has clearly captured the essence of the book so I am only going to write a small amount (see her Good Reads review). My husband and I traveled west this summer and read the book during our trip. Due to Dan O'Brien and his powerful writing, the reader is drawn into the story/narrative about the struggles of a cattle rancher turned bison rancher. Dan details the reasonings for his farm's transition, including the history of buffalo on the land, the symbiotic relationship of the buffalo with the land, and the issues that were caused by European settlers bringing their cattle to the land. My husband and I strongly believe in Dan's efforts and will now seek out his company, Wild Idea Buffalo, and begin purchasing bison (for consumption) as the herd has been raised in a humane fashion.