Brendan Prairie

In Brendan Prairie, O'Brien writes with grace and eloquence of fractured lives and endangered lands. He tells the story of Bill Malone, widower, father, lover and hot-tempered man, whose world is unraveling around him. Malone's young wife died mysteriously years ago, and something also died within him. Once a great falconer and environmentalist Malone has entered middle age a broken man, devoid of the passion and promise of his youth. His aching regret is the disappearance of his old world and he is infuriated that Brendan Prairie, his beloved retreat, is threatened by developers who want to build condominiums on the land.
When the developer Andy Arnold dies in a suspicious accident and Malone's long-ago love, Margaret Adamson, becomes involved in the investigation, old emotions are stirred and uncomfortable truths must be confronted.

A conflict between developers and environmentalists in South Dakota's Black Hills provides the crucible through which two characters must pass in order to become reacquainted with their own better selves. At the center of O'Brien's (Eminent Domain) gracefully restrained novel is Bill Malone, a passionate environmentalist who once trained wild falcons. Crippled from a mysterious knee injury and left bereft by the death of his wife years earlier in a car accident, Malone is now a heavy drinker who teaches biology at a local university. Ironically, the Special Agent for the Fish and Wildlife Service who has come to approve a controversial condominium development on Brendan Prairie is Margaret Adamson, an old lover from college. Just as a front-end loader begins construction of the development, its brakes suddenly fail and the developer's representative is crushed to death. Malone, an outspoken opponent of the project, is suspected of sabotage. Meanwhile, an old photograph prompts his 20-year-old daughter, Allison, to ask questions about her mother's death, and Adamson's arrival stirs more memories about his younger days as a falconer when he met his wife, who shared his passion. Afraid she has let her old friend down and still feeling responsible for Malone's arrest years ago for trapping a falcon without a permit, Adamson is determined now to back Malone, despite her own suspicions about his involvement in the developer's death. O'Brien, whose prose comes most fully alive when describing Malone's work with the falcons, has written an engaging, heartfelt story about how one man's passion for wildlife and a beautiful woman is betrayed.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

South Dakota biologist O'Brien (The Spirit of the Hills, 1988, etc.) continues to write well about what he knows best--the places and people of the Black Hills--but still struggles to surmount the melodramatic clich‚s that have plagued his fiction. Fish and Wildlife Special Agent Margaret Adamson comes to the Black Hills to give final approval to a proposal to build condominiums on the hitherto unspoiled Brendan Prairie, only to watch in horror as a runaway earthmover plows down and kills the developer--a suspicious death that complicates matters professionally and personally as Margaret stays for the ensuing investigation and in the process renews contact with old flame Bill Malone. Malone, a dynamic wildlife enthusiast and highly regarded trainer of falcons when Margaret knew him 20 years earlier, has become a limping, subdued college professor and single parent, but his passion for the wilderness still comes through in his opposition to the Prairie's development. The old Bill reemerges when a wounded falcon is brought to him and he decides to save rather than euthanize it, thanks to the urging of daughter Allison and their gentle-giant friend Cooney. Meanwhile, the old attraction between Bill and Margaret is rekindled as well. She learns the painful truth about Allison's mother and the secret behind Bill's limp, so that when suspicion that he might have tampered with the deadly 'dozer finally surfaces, she's ready to fight for him. But others are too: Cooney confesses before Bill can be charged; then, when it becomes apparent that the real culprit, Allison, is about to come clean, Cooney makes the ultimate sacrifice, hanging himself in his cell--leaving the survivors resolved to make something more of their lives. This tale's first-rate location details and good intentions, unfortunately, aren't enough to overcome an uneven plot burdened by schmaltz, too many particulars on falcon-training, and serious problems too readily overcome. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

This is not only a good suspense novel, it evokes well the landscape of South Dakota, a part of the West where environmental issues are hotly debated. A licensed falconer, widower Bill Malone once again meets Margaret Adamson, with whom he worked in the Park Service 25 years ago, and who is now lovingly releasing perigrine falcons into the Rocky Mountains. Reunited, Bill and Margaret face a problem. Andy Anderson of Mountain Air Estates is mysteriously killed by a truck with faulty brakes. Because Bill vehemently opposed the development of his beloved prairie and because of his sometimes violent behavior, he is suspected of being involved. Together, love growing between them, Bill and Margaret are involved in a confrontation from which uncomfortable truths emerge. No one writes with more love than O'Brien about the Black Hills--a sea of dark ponderosa pines and fingers of aspen snaking up the hillsides from an island of grass. Theresa Ducato