Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Proulx is usually known for her fiction, particularly such works as Postcards, The Shipping News and Brokeback Mountain. This nonfiction book is instead a personal memoir in which Proulx documents her process of buying 640 acres of Nature Conservancy land in southeastern Wyoming in the early 2000s.

She names the place "Bird Cloud" after an image she saw in the sky on a first visit. Can she make the perfect home here?

Anyone who has built a house from scratch can understand the huge amount of work involved in this venture. Here, more layers of difficulty are added to the typical decisions and challenges, due to the site's remote location, near-constant high winds, and long, frigid winters. Proulx lands on the construction services of the talented men of one local family. This group comes to be known to us as The James Gang. They keep the project going for as many months as it takes. And it takes a good long while. In the meantime, Proulx travels a great deal. She seems not to settle in any one spot for very long. Back at Bird Cloud, she relies on The James Gang to create her ideal home under those less-than-ideal conditions. Progress inches along. Bills for materials and services pile up. So does frustration.

Proulx alternates the stories of new construction with her memories of past houses she has lived in. This introspection leads to looking at some of her own family history, which traces in part to French-Canadian roots. As for the many houses in her past: Proulx tells us what was wrong with each one of them. She vows to resolve all of those past failings with her new home at Bird Cloud.

The main attraction here is the property itself. The grassland, the cliffs. And the birds. Eagles, both bald and golden, stay here all year. Migratory waves of myriad others pass through. Proulx may be best known for weaving stories about human interactions; yet here she does a marvelous job at nature writing. We learn a lot about the wildlife on the plains. We also learn a lot about Wyoming history: the good and the not-so-good. This includes instances of man's inhumanity against man and also against animals, too. This is a complex territory. If you've ever visited or driven through southern Wyoming, west of Cheyenne, then you will recognize the landscape and its culture.

I chose to listen to this book, for eight hours on seven CDs. Author Annie Proulx reads the first chapter. The rest are narrated by Joan Allen, who does a terrific job at voicing the emotions of the text. I'm led to wonder why Proulx read only the first chapter. Was it by her choice, or someone else's? Hmmm.

Bird Cloud offers an interesting story to a variety of readers, including Proulx fans, construction and renovation aficionados, nature lovers, and residents and admirers of the American West. Proulx's experience could even serve as a cautionary tale to anyone hoping to undertake a similar project. However, a greater and unspoken theme lies behind these pages. What does it mean to "be home?" How DO we find our true homes: the places where we most belong, and those where we most want to be? Did Annie Proulx succeed in finding hers?