Readers and writers: A sobering look at the vanishing prairie

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2 days ago

A sweeping look at the vanishing American prairie and two crime novels set in Minnesota are this week's offerings to our readers.
'Sea of Grass': by Dave Hage and Josephine Marcotty (Random House, $32)
Agriculture has altered — and damaged — the very biological and chemical cycles that created the extraordinary prairie in the first place, from the creation of soil to the flow and purity of water, to the ebb of wildlife and the circulating of elements in and out of the atmosphere. It's created intractable pollution problems that endanger human health and cripple other ecosystems, from its damage to insects to the dead zone in the Golf of Mexico. — from 'Sea of Grass'
In this timely and important book, subtitled 'The Conquest, Ruin, and Redemption of Nature on the American Prairie,' award-winning former Star Tribune writers Hage and Marcotty explore and explain the environmental crisis caused by the disappearance of thousands of acres of American prairie that once stretched from Montana to Illinois, eastern Minnesota to northern Texas.
The North American prairie, they write, is one of Earth's four great temperate grasslands, the others being the steppes of Central Asia, the Pampas of South America, and the veld of southern Africa. It is also one of the most threatened ecosystems on Earth, home to small insects and big grazing mammals.
Before the Industrial Revolution took hold in farming, the untouched prairie grasses created a web of roots that could grow as deep as two feet into the ground. When white settlers arrived in the 19th century they brought with them plows that tore up the prairie for the first time. These pioneers used rudimentary plows, but when steel plows became available farmers were able to plant and harvest much more food per acre to feed a growing population. This affected the prairie's biological diversity as rivers were rerouted, synthetic nitrogen became a standard fertilizer and the delicate symbiosis of the prairie was uprooted. Over decades the prairie was converted into some of the richest farmland on Earth, but the country paid a terrible price
The authors help us understand what that price means in chapters examining river, dirt, bugs and water. For Minnesotans, the discussion about rivers might be the most important as we learn how the Mississippi picks up fertilizer runoff from rivers that flow into it, growing more polluted as it rolls through the Twin Cities southward until the pollutants create a 'dead zone' of chemicals in the Gulf of Mexico.
Now industrial agriculture is plowing up the remaining grasslands at the rate of 1 million acres a year If the sea of grass is to be saved, the authors argue, it will take cooperation between farmers who care about the land, help from the federal government and efforts by eco-conscious consumers.
Although we are losing everything from bees to oysters, 'Sea of Grass' ends with hope that comes from people like South Dakota writer and buffalo rancher Dan O'Brien, who sees the great creatures that once roamed the prairie as far as the eye could see as a way to restore the animals' ancestral home.
Books about environmental devastation are increasingly common as we watch the natural world we once knew disappear. 'Sea of Grass,' written clearly and with passion, is one of the best.
The authors will introduce 'Seas of Grass' during a free program at 7 p.m. Thursday at Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.
'Rattlesnake Bluff': by Cary J. Griffith (Adventure Publications, $16.95)
'..they hadn't anticipated a rattlesnake's denning instincts, the keen skillset of a wolf dog's nose, the remarkable aptitude of a DNR herpetologist, DNA analysis of isolated rattlesnake populations, or the use of implanted chips to track rattlesnake specimens. Or that an apparently forged confession might contain the details of what actually happened. — from 'Rattlesnake Bluff'
A rattlesnake found on the seat of a Bobcat at a construction site sends U.S. Fish & Wildlife Special Agent Sam Rivers and his wolf dog Gray into investigating a 23-year-old crime in the fifth book in this appealing series. This is no ordinary rattler; it's an eastern massasauga, an endangered species that doesn't belong in Minnesota although it might have escaped from a Wisconsin research facility where a scientist is implanting snakes to track their movements. Rivers is joined by local DNA personnel as he tries to figure out if he needs to shut down the site where the snake was found, holding up construction of expensive homes.
When Gray tracks the scent of two bodies buried in the bluff, everything changes. The readers know how the decayed bodies of a young brother and sister got to their rocky resting place but Sam does not. Meanwhile, Sam's boss in Denver is not happy with him staying in Minnesota and getting behind on paperwork he avoids.
The cast includes a mysterious person who called himself Der Furher as a teenager, Sam's fiancee who just wants him to come home, and a woman contractor working hard in a business dominated by men.
'Rattlesnake Bluff' gets more complicated and dangerous as Sam and others get closer to figuring out what the snakes have to do with the building site and learn new details about the night the young siblings were killed when hit by a car.
Rivers is a smart guy who knows his flora and fauna as well as his duty to wildlife, even snakes. Readers who can't stand the thought of snakes, even on the page, will be happy to know that the creatures are not described in great detail and one of them is dead.
The author, who also writes nature-based nonfiction, grew up roaming the woods, fields and waters of eastern Iowa, where he developed a lifelong love of wild places.
'Payne Avenue': by M.T. Bartone (Modern Prose Press, $13.99)
Eddie laughed as he tightened his grip on O's wrist before quickly yanking out the little screwdriver. O screamed as he pulled his mangled hand away from Eddie. He held it gingerly in his other hand, close to his chest. — from 'Payne Avenue'
Set in the neighborhoods surrounding St. Paul's Payne Avenue, this is the story of the rise and fall of Eddie Bracchio, a gangster who returns to St. Paul from Brooklyn and sees ways to build a criminal empire while betraying his powerful boss.
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Eddie begins slowly, recruiting two teen boys to become his drug dealers. Carefully and sometimes violently, he replaces the neighborhoods' low-level crime bosses and builds a successful illegal business, siphoning money that's rolling in through the books of a restaurant he helps an old woman open.
What Eddie wants most, though, he can't have — beautiful Kate De Luca, who's married and has no idea Eddie wants to control and possess her. When Kate suffers a tragedy, the plot becomes hers as she ponders revenge.
'Payne Avenue' is long at 154 pages, which sometimes slows the plot. But the author does a fine job of giving readers a sense of place, with characters moving along the streets that surround Payne Avenue in this tale of a killer whose ambition is his ruin.