For twenty years, Dan O’Brien battled drought, overgrazed pastures, and falling cattle prices as he struggled to maintain his cattle ranch, The Broken Heart, nestled at the foot of South Dakota's Black Hills. Having to take stints as an endangered species biologist, English teacher, and handyman to help pay off his accumulating debts, he questioned the logic of this losing enterprise, but never lost his fierce love of the Great Plains. So when a neighboring buffalo rancher invites him to lend a hand at the annual buffalo roundup, O’Brien comes face to face with these mammoth, impressive creatures, and the seeds are planted for converting his own ranch from cattle to buffalo. Starting with thirteen calves, "short-necked, golden balls of wool," O’Brien embarks on a journey that returns buffalo to his land for the first time in more than a century and a half.

In BUFFALO FOR THE BROKEN HEART, Dan O’Brien, a writer possessed of “a keen and poetic eye” (The New York Times Book Review), ranges freely under the big western sky, bringing the Great Plains to life in clear and vibrant prose. Whether he’s describing the grazing pattern of the buffalo (moving quickly from one pasture to another, thereby maintaining the diversity of the grasses), the ancient thrill of watching a falcon hone in on its prey, or the comical spectacle of a buffalo bull wallowing in the mud, O’Brien brings together a novelist’s eye for detail with an ecologist’s understanding to create an entertaining and enriching narrative.

At once a heartfelt account of his struggles at the Broken Heart, a short history of the buffalo and its near extinction, and an engaging lesson in wildlife ecology, BUFFALO FOR THE BROKEN HEART illustrates the power of a dream and how life becomes infinitely richer when we dare to follow one. This is Dan O’Brien’s greatest achievement to date, placing him firmly in the canon of other great writers on nature such as Annie Dillard and Peter Matthiessen.

"A wonderful book. Artful, lucid, down-to-earth, poetic, and entertaining, BUFFALO FOR THE BROKEN HEART is a tale told with uncommon gentleness, decency, and discretion, much humor, and real wisdom. There's enough sorrow to break your heart, and enough joy to mend it again. A classic."
—John Nichols, author of The Milagro Beanfield War

"This book is a phoenix, a thing of beauty rising from the ashes of loss. In this story of one ranch, Dan O'Brien tells us important things about the world we live in, and what it means to risk doing the right thing."
—Kathleen Norris, author of The Cloister Walk and Amazing Grace

Other praise for Dan O'Brien:

"Dan O'Brien's BUFFALO FOR THE BROKEN HEART at first appears to be an agrarian fable on the high order of James Galvin's THE MEADOW. But then O'Brien picks up the energy, and his urgent, desperate attempts to save his ranch explode on the page. I was carried away by O'Brien's intense familiarity with his beautifully-rendered western landscape and the drive entailed in his turning his life around by his attention to an ancient beast."
—Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall

Dan O'Brien, a writer and buffalo rancher, is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction about the West. He has worked as an endangered-species biologist and an English teacher. He lives in Whitewood, South Dakota.