THE BUFFALO COMMONS

Multipublishable Montanan Wheeler, who apparently writes with three hands at once (over 30 novels, and see below), and who won the Spur Award for Sierra (1996), now gets doubly serious in treating a controversial modern subject: Laslo Honorey, a zillionaire, wants to defeat the spread of agribusiness on the High Plains and—along with federal regulators and environmentalists—nationalize thousands of miles of grasslands and rebuild them as buffalo grazing grounds (a “buffalo commons”). But what of the Nichols family, which has ranched the grasslands for over a century? Must their way of life fade away? Thrumming at an appreciably deeper level of feeling than ever before, Wheeler should attract fresh readers.