• Dan O'Brien
• Jill Maguire
• Gervase Hittle
• Cyd Evans

Dan O’Brien

Dan O'Brien is an owner of the Cheyenne River Ranch just west of the Badlands National Park and North of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. He lives & shares his life on the ranch with his partner Jill Maguire, and their old friends Erney Hersman & Gervase Hittle. Dan also continues to manage the Broken Heart Ranch, which is in the shadow of Bear Butte for the new owners and friends Rolle & Ell Hill.

Dan has been a wildlife biologist and rancher for more than thirty years, and knows the boom and bust cycle of cattle ranching inside out. He is also one of the most celebrated falconers in America today. He was a prime mover in the restoration of peregrine falcons in the Rocky Mountains in the 1970s and 80s. Described by the New York Times as a writer with "a keen and poetic eye…" Dan is one of the most powerful literary voices on the Plains. His novels are, The Spirit of the Hills, In the Center of the Nation, Brendan Prairie, The Contract Surgeon and The Indian Agent. Dan's two-volume memoirs on falconry, The Rites of Autumn and Equinox, are an intimate and revealing exploration of his life-long search for wildness on the Plains. Dan's latest non-fiction book, Buffalo for the Broken Heart (Random House, September 2001), explores the history of his ranch and the conversion from beef to buffalo. Buffalo for the Broken Heart has also recently been purchased by Universal Studies for Edward Norton. A screenplay has been commissioned and a movie could be in the future.

Dan is a two-time winner of the National Endowment for the Arts individual artist's grant, a two time winner of the Western Heritage Award and a 2001 recipient of the Bush Creative Arts Fellowship.

Dan is currently working on his latest Novel "Stolen Horses". In addition to writing, Dan divides his time between, teaching ecology and writing, serves on the board of Wildlife Experiences and the Black Hills branch of TNC, working on the ranches, and running Wild Idea Buffalo Company. Click here to order buffalo meat.

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