Darlene Raminez reviews Buffalo for the Broken Heart: Restoring Life to a Black Hills Ranch by Dan O'Brien It’s such a rare thing these days for me to read a book from cover to cover in a week but as we sailed across the united states on I 90 I couldn’t help but wonder what life was like on the open plains of South Dakota. As it turns out I didn’t have to wait very long. In Wall, South Dakota I found just the book I needed to tell me. And as you would guess it didn’t take me long to finish the tale.
The story intrigued me with the scientific facts of mal grazing to the pop-up stories of characters long gone. The personal story of struggle and hardship was not wasted on this mesmerized girl originally from N.Y. Certain I would enjoy the summer even in the Bad Lands I was not naive enough to think of relocating to South Dakota. The author paints a clear picture of the personal challenges the winter forces you to endure. He also wins your heart over in his cause of buffalo versus cattle and helps you enjoy being a buffalo jerky meat-eater again. It didn’t take me long to finish this book even after I arrived at our Tacoma destination. It was a geographical read that I enjoyed learning about and made my trip more memorable. D.M. Ramirez