With all the swagger of a classic western, a legendary buffalo claims his rightful place among the genre's most iconic heroes.

Meet Rathuun. Born in an idyllic canyon, tragedy strikes on his first day. A grizzly bear scatters the herd, devours his twin, and leaves him to shiver and die. But the buffalo calf with a white spot on his chin survives.

The plains are changing fast. Wagons roll west in endless streams. Telegraph wires stretch across the horizon. Locomotives scream down polished rails, slicing through the earth. Extinction seems imminent when everyone wants to kill the biggest buffalo on the prairie. Native people shoot arrows and drive herds over cliffs. Hide hunters slaughter millions. An obsessed buffalo assassin is determined to wipe them all out and change the world forever. There's an army of barking rifles, and they're all pointed at Rathuun.

Will the hunters take Rathuun's head and leave his carcass to rot on the prairie?

This sweeping epic thunders across the American West, taking readers to unforgettable western landmarks. If you like classic westerns, thrilling action, and high-stakes historical adventures, grab your copy by the horns.

Welcome to the prairie!

My Review:

I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting into when I picked this up. After all, “classic westerns” are something out of the “thrilling days of yesteryear”. Then again, that “yesteryear” is exactly the place that Rathuun himself thundered out of, leading the last vast herd of buffalo across the Great Plains of the American West in his search for the buffalo equivalent of “The Promised Land”.

There’s a lot to unpack in that description. But I am going to try because the biggest surprise of Rathuun’s story is that he’s the one telling it. And that it is immensely captivating both in spite of and because of that fact. Which is fitting because Rathuun is pretty darned immense himself.

The saga – and it definitely is a saga, another kind of book that isn’t seen nearly as much as it used to – begins with tragedy. Along with one heck of a steep learning curve for both Rathuun AND the reader.

From Rathuun’s perspective, it’s a shocking start to his life. Which is where the story begins – at its and his beginning. Rathuun is practically a newborn, a buffalo calf, contentedly nursing from his mother with his twin brother nearby and the herd all around them.

Then the herd gets spooked by a rumbler, and they all run from the danger – as they should – except for Rathuun’s twin, already caught by the carnivore, and Rathuun himself, transfixed by the scene.

At this point the story takes off and the reader goes a bit spare. Because the story is told from Rathuun’s first person perspective. We’re inside the buffalo calf’s frightened, confused head – and it’s a surprising place to be. Especially since buffalo don’t refer to themselves as buffalo, and they don’t use the same terms for other animals that humans would. Why would they?

So, at the same time that Rathuun the very young calf is processing this terrible thing that has just happened, we’re processing his processing into language that we understand. (A rumbler is a bear, which I was not certain of while reading. After I finished the book I discovered that the author has a bit of a glossary for buffalo language and terminology on his website and DAMN I wish I’d found it sooner!)

And even as all of that is going on and Rathuun’s trying to understand it and we’re trying to understand him, another facet of the story is introduced – US. Us humans. Or, as Rathuun refers to us, “striders”. Two young Native American boys find Rathuun lost and alone and lead him, first to their village for cow’s milk and then later to a place where his herd is grazing.

Along the way the boys and the buffalo form a bond that Rathuun doesn’t understand. But whatever, and however it is, that bond between buffalo and human allows the young creatures, regardless of species, to occasionally see through each other’s eyes. Whatever magic resides in that bond, it’s a bond for life.

And a bond that more than once SAVES Rathuun’s life as well.

The story that follows that dramatic opening takes Rathuun from nursing calf to powerful leader, and across the Great Plains and the Rocky Mountains from Yellowstone to the Grand Canyon. Along the way he is a witness to history – and to the destruction of his ‘people’, of the land they once roamed at will, and the conquest of the vast sweeping plains by the “striders” and their belching mechanical creations that foul the water, poison the grasslands, and divide Rathuun’s world into a patchwork of walls and guns and death.

What’s fascinating is the way that the story is always told from Rathuun’s point of view. We’re him as he grows through the stages of a buffalo’s life, as he thinks and learns and plans AND as he contests for leadership of a herd that he KNOWS he cannot save no matter how much he wishes he could.

Unless he can lead them to the place his gods have promised to the buffalo, Hruun-thurakk, the place where every bite is perfect.

Escape Rating A: As I said at the beginning, I did not know what I was getting into when I picked this up. I am certain that I didn’t expect to be anywhere near as captivated by the story as I turned out to be. Who knew a buffalo’s point of view could be so very compelling? But it absolutely was.

I did come into this thinking that it reminded me of some of the late James A. Michener’s really big sagas. Quite a few of his big stories, the ones that went really deeply, literally as well as figuratively, into the history of a place. I’m referring to books like Alaska and Centennial, where his history saga started long before humans entered the picture with plate tectonics and geology and rocks and trees. I was always grateful when those books finally got to the animals, because at least the animals had some personality!

Rathuun would certainly fit right into those sagas, as he has a literal TON of personality. And agency.

The person who recommended this book to me said it reminded her of Jack London’s classic, The Call of the Wild, in that the story is told entirely from the animal’s point of view – and the humans mostly exhibit the worst sides of human behavior. That’s true all the way around, but the perspective on humanity’s behavior is considerably more even-handed in Rathuun. The Call of the Wild does lean into the human prejudices of its time (it was published in 1903) where Rathuun himself only distinguishes between good individual “strider” behavior and bad, not painting either ‘side’ in the human conflict over the settlement of the West with any particular brush due to the color of their skin.

After all, from Rathuun’s buffalo perspective, we all really do look alike.

The magical realism bit of the story was fascinating. It was also just enough and not too much. At first, I’ll confess I wondered if the human story would take over, if intervention from those Native American boys would happen regularly and at key moments and that it would change the nature of the story. But they didn’t. This was always Rathuun’s story, and that piece of human connection just provided a way for the story to circle back around to its beginning.

That the buffalo had their own gods, that they revered and worshipped their mammoth predecessors, made for an interesting touch. Then again, if humans create gods in their own image – which we do – why wouldn’t buffalo follow a bigger, wiser version of themselves as well? Also, again, the mammoths’ promises to their descendants allowed Rathuun’s story to eke out the happy ending that readers know would have been impossible without some kind of godly intervention.

I came into Rathuun’s story expecting to be, well, interested but did not expect to feel as compelled from start to finish as I ultimately was. Whether you see this as a new perspective on the “classic western” or at least a more even-handed one, as a sweeping animal-centric saga like Watership Down or The Lion King, as a portrait of the vast untamed American West before humans either tamed or changed or destroyed it (opinions vary) or as the story of one small being rising to power and leadership and earning his peace, it’s still a captivating, thunderous tale.

This sweeping epic thunders across the American West, taking listeners
to unforgettable western landmarks. If you like classic westerns, thrilling
action, and high-stakes historical adventures, grab your copy by the horns.

Welcome to the prairie!

About the Author

David Fitz-Gerald writes frontier and pioneer western fiction from the
wilds of western Vermont—about as far west as you can get without
slipping into New York.

Though he’s never wrangled beeves to market, Dave was a top hand on his
grandfather’s dude ranch in the Adirondack Mountains… before he
turned ten. He’s lived most of his life on dirt roads. Whenever he gets
the chance, he travels west to recharge his spirit on the windswept prairies.

He’s an Adirondack 46’er which means that he’s hiked to the
top of every mountain in the park. In 2018, Dave completed the 1960s fitness
craze by hiking 50 miles in one day. That’s one heck of a long walk, but
not nearly as grueling as the iconic trails that he chases in his fiction.

Even after all these years, Dave still has his head in the clouds like Ken
from MY FRIEND FLICKA, and a quiet, self-reliant spirit like Sam from THE
TRUMPET OF THE SWAN. That blend of wonder, heart, and spirit runs through the
characters he portrays. His editor states he is “exceptionally good at
creating real moments between characters”—and readers seem to
agree.

Dave’s breakthrough series, Ghosts Along the Oregon Trail won
Chanticleer’s Grand Prize for Book Series. He’s now the author of
nearly twenty novels and counting, and as long as there’s coffee in the
kitchen, Dave will be plotting one adventurous story after another.

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https://mybook.to/RathuunKingofPrairie

Don’t forget to check out the giveaway HERE!