Odd Couples

A BUFFALO IN THE HOUSE The Extraordinary Story of Charlie And His Family By R.D. Rosen | Random House. 257 pp. $14

In 2000, Veryl Goodnight and Roger Brooks welcomed a most unusual guest into their Santa Fe home: a baby buffalo. The orphaned animal was a gift from a rancher friend who knew of the couple's affinity for large animals in general and buffalo in particular. Goodnight, an artist and a descendant of Charles Goodnight, the Texas rancher who, along with his wife, Mary Ann, is credited with helping save buffalo from extinction in the 19th century, had been seeking a model for a sculpture honoring the work of her ancestors. So when the couple took in the bison calf, explains R.D. Rosen in A Buffalo in the House, they weren't simply being altruistic.

Sure enough, the animal, whom the couple named Charlie, became more than an artistic muse; he became part of the family. Roger discovered that the calf wanted to follow him everywhere "around the house, to the top of the driveway to get the mail," Rosen writes. The calf, who Roger thought "smelled like fresh laundry," even on occasion would "curl up with him for an afternoon siesta." That bond was reinforced when Charlie was nearly paralyzed in an accident.

Of course there are many reasons why buffalo aren't house pets, among them their size, which can reach upward of 2,000 pounds, and the book is filled with anecdotes -- amusing and tender -- about how man, woman and beast learned to coexist. It also offers an enlightening history of buffalo in America. Rosen, best known for mystery novels such as Strike Three You're Dead, says that he was drawn to write this quirky tale after a chance meeting with Charlie's chiropractor at a cocktail party. You are likely to be similarly charmed.

THE YELLOW HOUSE Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Nine Turbulent Weeks in Provence By Martin Gayford | Mariner. 339 pp. $14.95

When Vincent van Gogh invited Paul Gauguin to share his house in Arles in 1888, he envisioned it as the first step toward "a miniature monastic community dedicated to producing the art of the future." He was also seeking "a soulmate with whom he could reach complete agreement." Van Gogh was overly optimistic: The nine weeks the two artists spent as housemates that fall were neither monastic nor harmonious, according to Martin Gayford in The Yellow House, a chronicle of that tumultuous period, which culminated in Van Gogh's famous ear-cutting and descent into madness. But the arrangement did spark a flurry of artistic invention, including paintings such as Van Gogh's "Red Vineyard" and Gauguin's "Night Café."

Gayford's account of this important and well-known episode in art history is highly accessible, combining a thorough interpretation of the artworks (reproductions of which are woven through the text) with a perceptive analysis of the two strong personalities who created them. Relying heavily on letters and other personal documents, Gayford recreates the clash of temperament ("one full of renewed health and confidence, the other teetering on the border of derangement") and artistic styles ("He is romantic," Gauguin wrote in a letter, "and me, I incline more to a primitive state") that made this odd pairing so fraught but fruitful.

From Our Previous Reviews

· Ron Charles likened Maggie O'Farrell's novel The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (Harvest, $14) to Kate Chopin's The Awakening, Charlotte Gilman's The Yellow Wallpape r and Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea: "stories that illuminate the suffering quietly endured by women in polite society."

· Mark Levine captures "the crushing human toll of an American twister" in F5: Devastation, Survival, and the Most Violent Tornado Outbreak of the Twentieth Century (Hyperion, $14.95), which focuses on a particularly destructive day: April 3, 1974, when, over the course of 17 hours, 148 tornadoes hit North America, wrote Gary Krist.

· In The Pentagon (Random House, $18), Washington Post reporter Steve Vogel weaves political and architectural history to tell the story of an edifice, James Mann commented, that "was built upon a foundation of lies, secrecy and cost overruns."

· Shadow of the Silk Road (Harper Perennial, $15.95), a travelogue of Colin Thubron's journey along "the ancient Silk Road, from Xian in central China to Antioch on the shore of the Mediterranean" is "as much a history lesson as a contemporary adventure," noted Jonathan Yardley.

Nora Krug is a regular contributor to Book World.