A Buffalo in the House: The True Story of a Man, an Animal, and the American West [Hardcover]

R. D. Rosen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 5, 2007

Marley and Me meets All Creatures Great and Small, as an ailing but lovable orphan buffalo joins a Santa Fe household.

A sprawling suburban house in Santa Fe is not the kind of home where a buffalo normally roams, but Veryl Goodnight and Roger Brooks are not your ordinary animal lovers. Over a hundred years after Veryl's ancestors, Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight, hand-raised two baby buffalo to help save the species from extinction, the sculptor and her husband adopt an orphaned buffalo calf of their own. Against a backdrop of the old American West, A Buffalo in the House tells the story of a household situation beyond any sitcom writer's wildest dreams

Charlie has no idea he's a buffalo and Roger has no idea just how strong the bond between man and buffalo can be. In the historical shadow of the near-extermination of a majestic and misunderstood animal, Roger sets out to save just one buffalo. Written in the tradition of Ian Frazier's Great Plains and the work of Garrison Keillor and Bill Bryson, A Buffalo in the House tells an important, uplifting story about one animal's ability to touch human lives and reconnect people of all ages to the vanished past.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Rosen combines his skills as a mystery novelist (Strike Three You're Dead) and cultural critic (Psychobabble) to tell the powerful story of Charlie, a week-old orphaned buffalo who in 2000 was given a temporary home in Santa Fe with animal lovers Roger Brooks and Veryl Goodnight and who then stays for three memorable and sometimes heartbreaking years. As the story unfolds, Rose deftly explores a relationship between Charlie and Brooks that brought out previously unexplored depths of tenderness in the latter, and a devotion surprising for a wild animal: "While Roger read the paper on a lawn chair Charlie would sniff him, or he'd curl up with him for an afternoon siesta." Rosen also uses the couple's own fascinating backgrounds—especially that of Goodnight, a distant relative of Charles and Mary Goodnight, who had helped save the buffalo from extinction in the 1870s—to explore past and present political and wildlife management issues. But the heart of the book is the bond forged over three years between Brooks and his beloved Charlie, whose special combination of "sheer size and gentle disposition," as well as his all-too-short life, make him one of the most memorable characters in recent nature writing. B&w illus. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Rosen tells multiple stories, from a heartwarming tale of bonding between people and animals to the history of buffalo extermination in the American West and the current endangered state of the wild herd in Yellowstone National Park. The jumps between narratives can be disconcerting, but Rosen does a fair job of keeping the main story in the forefront: Charlie, a newborn buffalo separated from his mother, is raised by a couple outside of Santa Fe. The hook here is that sculptor Veryl Goodnight, who uses Charlie for a model, is the descendant of Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight, two of a small group who saved the buffalo from extinction in the late nineteenth century. Clearly Rosen intends to tell the story of a tie between human beings and buffalo that has been preserved across generations and centuries. Unfortunately, there is no happy ending for Charlie. Ultimately, this is a cautionary tale about why only professionals should care for wild animals and a reminder that good intentions do not supplant knowledge and experience. Colleen Mondor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 242 pages
• Publisher: New Press, The (June 5, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1595581650
• ISBN-13: 978-1595581655
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 7.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,051,554 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Caring for an American Icon, June 6, 2007

By 

Thomas E. Rice (Champaign, IL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Buffalo in the House: The True Story of a Man, an Animal, and the American West (Hardcover)

Amid the noise, dust and confusion of a moving buffalo herd near Yellowstone National Park, a newly born buffalo calf strays from his mother, never to see her again. Eventually "mother" would be Roger Brooks, a retired commercial airline plot, and his wife Veryl Goodnight, a sculptor, who adopted and named the buffalo Charlie, after Veryl's legendary great-great uncle Charles Goodnight, who helped bring back buffaloes from near extinction.

Author R.D. Rosen tells the story of the couple and the joys, difficulties and sorrows they experience while raising Charlie from week-old bottle-fed calf to 1800-pound bull. Reading of these experiences just drained my emotions. I treasure this book for its revelation of how an animal can affect so intimately those who care for it. I was drawn mostly to Roger's close attachment to Charlie. "Ethologists and philosophers argue endlessly about what animals feel," the author writes, "and whether they feel in the same way that humans do. In Charlie's case . . . it was a question of something else altogether: how deeply an animal can get a human to feel." And therein lies the beauty of this book.

Interwoven with Charlie's story is the history of the plight of the buffalo, or bison, an American icon. I value the book for its documentation of the hardships of the buffalo in American history and the efforts of caring people trying to protect this majestic animal, a living symbol of America's heritage. Today, the herd at Yellowstone is the only continuously wild herd left in America, yet these buffalo are frequently mistreated. Rosen writes of efforts to preserve the Yellowstone herd, especially the work of the Buffalo Field Campaign, a group that is at the forefront of efforts to protect the wild buffaloes.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Delightful Surprise, July 4, 2007

By 

Louise S. - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Buffalo in the House: The True Story of a Man, an Animal, and the American West (Hardcover)

Cried my way through to the end of Buffalo in the House this morning. I loved the book. I am not an animal person, but I was still charmed by Roger's relationship to Charlie the buffalo, and absolutely dismayed by the history of the buffalo in our country. This book is engaging and informative from start to finish -- an educational and heartfelt delight.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars History, Drama and a Lot of Laughs, July 15, 2007

By 

J. Thompson (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: A Buffalo in the House: The True Story of a Man, an Animal, and the American West (Hardcover)

We had the pleasure of meeting the author at a book reading here in Albuquerque. I had been intrigued with the topic as Santa Fe is just a bit north and the main character actually living in the house....well, we just had to go. We have also been to the National Bison Range in MT but I had no idea of the bison's history (both past and current). Without going into too much detail, this is a must read for animal lovers as well as those who just like a good story. I laughed a lot (and cried) and learned that our inhumane attitudes still exist in the west. As I drive past the Sandia Pueblo and look upon the bison grazing in the field, I will see them much differently. It's time we took a stand against the slaughter in Yellowstone. I gave the book to my 10 year old niece who lives in Montana - maybe she can help change things.