Articles

Posted by The Rapid City Journal

Author Dan O’Brien of Hermosa doesn’t need to worry about reading this year’s One Book South Dakota selection. His own book, “Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch,” has been chosen for 2009.

O’Brien said he is honored to receive the distinction.

“I always put the One Book South Dakota on my list to read that year,” he said. “I know a lot of the authors, and sometimes I’ve already read the book.”

“Buffalo for the Broken Heart” is the first nonfiction book chosen for One Book South Dakota. It is an autobiographical account of a few years in O’Brien’s life when he converted his South Dakota cattle ranch to a buffalo ranch. Readers from all over the state are asked to read the book and discuss it with others.

Since 2003, the South Dakota Center for the Book, a program of the South Dakota Humanities Council, has invited libraries, schools, book clubs, civic organizations and corporations across the state to read the same book as part of the One Book South Dakota project. The project is designed to stimulate discussion and generate ideas.

Sherry DeBoer, executive director of the South Dakota Humanities Council, said each year a selection committee recommends books to the board of directors, which makes the final decision.

O’Brien is the second South Dakota author to be chosen. The other was Kent Meyers in 2005 with his book, “The Work of Wolves.”

DeBoer said the selection committee looks for geographic diversity, but it never goes outside the Midwest for authors. The committee makes the selections based on a number of conditions.

First, committee members strive to have author gender balance, DeBoer said. Second, the book has to be by a living author because the One Book project culminates with the author’s appearance at the annual Festival of Books in Deadwood. Third, the book must appeal to as broad a group as possible and must be accessible to as many audiences as possible.

“The whole purpose of the program is that everybody in South Dakota read the book at the same time and then discuss it with their neighbors and with one another in both typical and atypical situations,” she said. She said ideally, discussions will take place in corporate boardrooms, over lunch, within reading groups or as part of Kiwanis or Rotary-type club memberships.

“We really encourage people all over to read it,” she said.

And fourth, the book must be fairly contemporary and pose values or humanities questions that will lead to fuller discussions.

In addition to meeting the panel’s criteria, she said “Buffalo for the Broken Heart” is an excellent book and was an easy choice. DeBoer said she has read all of O’Brien’s books. “I’m a real big Dan O’Brien fan, as many of our board members are,” she said.

Judging by the attendance at last week’s Sunday Selections event at the Rapid City Public Library, there are a lot of O’Brien followers around. Librarian Susan Braunstein said O’Brien drew the largest crowd in the library’s history. The 25 chairs set up in the Helen Hoyt Room were not enough to accommodate the turnout. More chairs had to be carted in to seat the approximately 50 people who came to listen to the author discuss his book and answer questions. After the author spoke, professor Kathy Antonen of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology led a book discussion about “Buffalo for the Broken Heart” funded by a grant from the South Dakota Humanities Council.

In addition to being a writer and buffalo rancher, O’Brien also has worked as an endangered-species biologist and as an English teacher. He said because “Buffalo for the Broken Heart” is slanted toward environmental issues, he has been contacted by conservation groups such as Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund to work with them on a few projects.

Since his book was published, O’Brien said the grass-fed buffalo sphere has expanded.

“When we started, we were the only people doing it. And now there are several outfits that are doing grass fed.” He said he believes his book played only a small part in that movement.

He also helped with a nonprofit corporation, Sustainable Harvest Alliance, which increases the supply of grass-fed and field harvested Lakota buffalo to markets. O’Brien was enlisted by a group of Lakota people who wanted their buffalo harvested in the field the same way he harvests his.

He said the whole sustainable harvest movement – the anti-feedlot movement – goes across different disciplines that are coming together.

“We’re going to be hamstrung by this economy deal, but I really do think the day is coming when grass-fed buffalo will be something that people can actually get fairly readily. I’m really happy to have been part of that awakening.”

O’Brien said he does not see buffalo ever replacing cattle.

“I think the West will always be cattle country, but there are areas where large-scale bison ranching makes perfect sense,” he said.

He said there are areas in the state that are not good cattle country, but that are well-suited for buffalo. “A lot of them are public land. Maybe we should look closely at how we can actually do that profitably.”

His 10th book is due out in September and will be published by the University of Chicago Press. It is a large-format coffee table book called “Great Plains: America’s Lingering Wild.” He wrote the text that accompanies photographs of prairies from Canada, Mexico and the United States. O’Brien worked and traveled with wildlife and landscape photographer Michael Forsbert over a three-year-period. Ted Kooser, two-time U.S. poet laureate, and Great Plains scholar and geography professor David Wishart also contributed to the book.

After “Buffalo for the Broken Heart” was published, O’Brien ran two buffalo ranches for about five years. He has since sold the northern ranch to devote more time to his many other obligations. On his Twitter page, he calls himself a “sustainable buffalo rancher, author, falconer, wildlife biologist, environmentalist and reluctant business owner.”

Parts of his “Buffalo for the Broken Heart” book have morphed into Wild Idea Buffalo Company, which is run by his significant other, Jill Maguire.

He has an article about grass-fed buffalo in the March-April issue of Eating Well magazine and has recently finished a first draft of a children’s book.

He said he is looking forward to teaching an environmental studies course in April at Carleton College called “Writing the Great Plains.” For now, he said, his speaking engagements have become more important to him economically than writing.

“And I’m working on a new book. Always,” he said. “Of course there’s always some interest in movies and things like that, which is perpetual and usually never amounts to anything.”

O’Brien said he is always trying to find enough time to finish the next book and is looking for ways to scale back on other things.

“I’ve got to dance with the girl that brought me, and that’s the writing,” he said.

For more information about Dan O’Brien, go to www.wildideabuffalo.com.

One Book South Dakota events

Here are a few of the events planned as part of the 2009 One Book South Dakota.

* Friday, May 8, 5 p.m.-6:30 p.m. – As part of the Dahl Mountain Arts Festival, the One Book program will kick off at the Rapid City Public Library with a book signing and reception for Dan O’Brien. Buffalo appetizers will be served. The event will conclude at the Dahl Arts Center with a book talk by O’Brien from 6:45 p.m. to 8 p.m.

* Saturday, June 27 – A book discussion is planned as part of the Bison Bash at the Outdoor Campus in Sioux Falls. Other events will include buffalo-related games for kids, buffalo crafts, cooking with buffalo meat, a bison touch table, archery and other buffalo-related activities.

* Thursday, Aug. 13 – A book event is planned in the Pierre/Fort Pierre area. The location is yet to be determined.

* Oct. 2-4 – South Dakota Festival of Books in Deadwood

Book traces author’s journey to return buffalo to prairie

By Cindy Card Buchholz, Journal correspondent

Dan O’Brien’s “Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch” is an autobiographical account of his journey to return the buffalo to its native place on the prairie. The book was named the Outstanding Nonfiction Book of 2001 by the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and is the 2009 One Book South Dakota selection chosen by the South Dakota Humanities Council.

The book begins with a story about the author’s first chance encounter with a lone buffalo bull near the Badlands National Monument years before he considered converting his cattle ranch near Whitewood to a buffalo ranch.

O’Brien admits he is not a cattleman and describes himself as an endangered-species biologist. “It’s those wild things that share the place with me that make it worth all the heartaches,” he wrote. As a falconer, he writes about the excitement of watching his falcon home in on its prey. As a biologist, he explains how the native prairie grasses and the bison, which are also indigenous to the prairie, share a symbiotic relationship.

He explains that the grazing pattern of buffalo and their existence on the plains is mutually beneficial to the plant species. He also explains why grass-fattened, or free-range buffalo, are naturally lower in calories and cholesterol.

The book is filled with colorful stories about the people who once lived on and near his ranch, and O’Brien connects their tales to the present. He also recounts the history of the buffalo that roamed freely on the prairie before the late 1870s until their massive slaughter and near extinction on the Great Plains. He retells the story of Pete Dupree’s capture of five buffalo that survived that slaughter and whose herd was later purchased by Scotty Philip.

He also tells how he impulsively came by his first herd of buffalo -13 orphaned buffaloes he named the Gashouse Gang. He referred to those baby buffaloes as the start of his own Jurassic Park of sorts. He is brutally honest about his financial concerns after purchasing that small herd with several what-have-I-done revelations until he decides to fully commit to becoming a buffalo rancher. His decision was not based solely on financial reasons. It was equally based on his personal desire to return the prairie to its natural state, at least on his own property. Throughout the book, O’Brien contemplates how to live a noble and honorable life, and for him, this is one step closer to achieving that.

Sherry DeBoer, executive director, South Dakota Humanities Council, said she thoroughly enjoyed “Buffalo for the Broken Heart.”

“It was so interesting to read it from a ranching perspective,” she said. “I grew up on a farm in eastern South Dakota. We raised cattle, pigs, chickens and milked cows over time. Each year we raised less. The whole idea of restoring the grasslands, and the beauty of that, makes so much sense. It would be more environmental friendly, and the end product appears to be healthier.”

Avid reader Ruth Herron of Rapid City said she liked everything about O’Brien’s book. Her only criticism is that it was not long enough.

“He’s hard to put down,” she said. “He has a very good sense of description, and he certainly gets down to what the prairies are like and what the animal life is like. I was born out at Faith, so I know what the prairies are like. He has a real feel for them.”