Wild Idea

About the Book

For more than forty years the prairies of South Dakota have been Dan O'Brien's home. Working as a writer and an endangered species biologist, he became convinced that returning free-roaming buffalo to the grasslands would return natural balance to the region and reestablish the undulating prairie lost through poor land management and overzealous farming. In 1998 he bought his first buffalo and began the task of converting a cattle ranch into an ethically run buffalo ranch.

Wild Idea is a book about how good food choices can influence federal policies and the integrity of our food system, and about the dignity and strength of a legendary American animal. It is also a book about people: a daughter coming to womanhood in a hard landscape, a friend and ranch hand who suffers tragedy, a venture capitalist who sees hope and opportunity in a struggling buffalo business, and the husband and wife behind the ranch, wondering if what they're doing will ever make a difference. At its center, Wild Idea is about a family and the people and animals that surround them—all trying to build a healthy life in a wide and sometimes dangerous land.

About the Author :

Dan O'Brien is the author of numerous award-winning novels and memoirs, including Great Plains Bison, Stolen Horses, Equinox, The Indian Agent, and The Contract Surgeon, all available from the University of Nebraska Press. He founded Wild Idea Buffalo Company in 1997.

Review :
“Wild Idea is a lyrical tribute to the idea of buffalo back on the plains, the rewards and challenges of putting them there. But it is so much more. It’s about all the life on the prairie, on the hardscrabble ranches and in the small towns. With this book, Dan secures his place as our modern prairie muse.”—Tom Brokaw, NBC journalist and author “Dan O’Brien’s book strikes me as a gentle but badly needed confrontation. . . . Figuring out how to realign the way we live with the health of the ecological systems that support us is the single most important challenge of the twenty-first century, and that makes O’Brien’s book an essential meditation.”—Edward Norton, actor and UN Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity “Making strong, lasting connections between the rugged land and the strong people is a staple of life on the Great Plains. Dan O’Brien’s gift is helping people understand this connection and the basic and difficult truth that sustainable living is not simple; it is as matted and dense as the thick fur that defines the buffalo’s very nature.”—Tom Daschle, former U.S. senator from South Dakota and former U.S. Senate majority leader "A deeply humane book that looks at ranching as a sustainable enterprise, a way of life more than an economic engine. . . . There may be plenty of disappointments out on the Plains, but this book is not one of them."—Kirkus “An impressive introduction to [Dan O’Brien’s] talent both as storyteller and visionary environmentalist. In telling the story of how and why he developed his Cheyenne River Ranch in South Dakota into a state-of-the-art operation producing grass-fed, humanely killed, and field-dressed bison meat, O’Brien also gives us the moving story of his own family and work relationships, bird dogs and falconry, as well as a history of the Great Plains and the sacred relationships between the land, the buffalo, and the Lakota people. . . . A sweeping narrative drama that reads like a Tolstoy novel. . . . O’Brien’s enthusiasm is contagious, and his love for the buffalo, the land, and his family and friends who work the land with him is emotionally conveyed to readers through the beauty of his words.”—Franz Burnier, Western American Literature “[Wild Idea is] at heart (and with heart) a memoir—a frank, moving recounting of the perennial hopes, fears, challenges, disappointments, and joys O’Brien and his family and friends face while trying to live and live with purpose ‘in a Difficult Land.’ . . . As the human stories unfurl, the prairie is ever underfoot and overhead, swirling with snowstorms, withering with drought, and breathing with buffalo herds that ‘seem to disappear into [its] folds.’ . . . O’Brien’s writing is rich with detail, humor, and insight. He is especially gifted at characterizing people in just a few lines of description and dialogue. . . . He is even more skilled at evoking the feeling of being out on the land. . . . Snippets of life, vividly remembered, gradually build into a larger story. . . . Brims with fierce, subtle joy.”—Tyra A. Olstad, Great Plains Research "[Wild Idea] is a sweet little sagebrush soap opera of extended family joys and travails."—Jim Sterba, Wall Street Journal

"[Wild Idea: Buffalo and Family in a Difficult Land is] a book that elegantly explores the tension between hope and futility in one man’s effort to kindle restoration on the Great Plains."—Carson Vaughan, High Country News