Brendan Prairie

by Dan O'Brien

Still coping with the loss of his young wife years ago, passionless Bill Malone has to take on developers who want to build condominiums on his beloved South Dakota retreat, Brendan Prairie, and an investigation into the suspicious death of developer Andy Arnold.

Once a great falconer and environmentalist, Malone has entered middle age a broken man, devoid of the passion and promise of his youth. And now the developers are threatening to build condominiums on his beloved Brendan prairie.

Genres: Fiction, Nature

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 1997

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

[M. Sarki · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://rogueliterarysociety.com/f/br...

Touted by the publisher as O’Brien’s “best book yet”, I was immediately put off by wondering if O’Brien had made his way into the mainstream and wrote something to engage readers better suited to the typically more popular literary fare. Not to be. O’Brien writes for O’Brien just as it should be. His unadorned prose deftly builds character with each succeeding page. O’Brien is intelligent and informed, and his writing challenges the best readers among us to stay with him as he performs his craft simply and quite beautifully.

Brendan Prairie is a western tale full of unrequited romance, deceit, jealousy, politics, dirty commerce, and ultimately an uncompromising love for the prairie lands of middle America, other human beings, and the animals that share a destiny with us. A suspenseful and moral tale sure to interest the best in us. And please note that nobody can make you love a bird like O’Brien can.

[Sondra Wolferman · Rating 3 out of 5]

After slogging through the first twenty-five pages describing the actions of a hunter (who also happens to be the main character)using live pigeons as bait to lure and capture wild birds of prey who in turn will be used to hunt other wild creatures for the entertainment of the sportsman, I knew I was going to have a problem with this story, and I was not disappointed. I am not against hunting, but this is a particularly cruel form of the sport. Throughout the novel there are numerous instances of this same 'wildlife enthusiast' sacrificing live rodents and small birds to his captive raptors, during which he seems to derive a sadistic pleasure from watching the carnage that ensues. Apparently, in the mind of this author and his preservationist 'hero', some forms of wildlife are more deserving of compassion than others. Granted, animal cruelty sells books, as does violence against women and pedophilia, but that doesn't make it any easier to take. The hero goes on to fight against the development of his favorite hunting gounds, Brendan Prairie, into a huge community of condominiums, which is the crux of a plot involving the murder of a real estate developer and a poignant love story between the hero and a representative of the Fish and Wildlife Service investigating the murder. The overall message of the novel is a plea for the preservation of wildlife and the habitat that sustains it, which I applaud, but I fail to see how exchanging one form of exploitation for another is helping anything. To give credit where it is due, the novel is well-written, with some beautiful descriptions of the scenery in and around the Black Hills of South Dakota, and a suspenseful plot.

[Carroll · Rating 3 out of 5]

Because I heard the author lecture at MSUM, I "liked" this outdoorsy novel.

[Bonnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Captivating.

[Linda C · Rating 3 out of 5]

Bill Malone, environmentalist and former falcon trainer, lives in western South Dakota with his daughter Allison and teaches biology at the local college. He’s hot-tempered and drinks too much. He lost his young wife in a car accident many years before and has a limp he doesn’t talk about. He still has a passion for nature but seems to be marking time. Things change when a condominium development is planned for his favorite prairie and his daughter starts asking questions about her mother and his early life. When the developer is killed in a mysterious accident and an old lover becomes involved in the investigation, the buried past begins to surface.
This was an odd story. At times I could not relate to the main character. I could not connect to the character’s early lifestyle. Just as much as I would fall in love with his passion for the prairie and descriptions, I would feel distanced by his response to some event. I had similar reactions to some of the other characters. I would admire and understand an action and then be turned off by their next comment or action. I came away with a sort of ambivalent feel for the book.