A couple of months ago, I was flipping through Michelle’s Bitch magazine and you won’t be surprised to hear that there were several book reviews that caught my eye. The book I had to reserve right then was The Blue Tattoo. The cover, with a picture of Olive Oatman is fabulous. And, since captivity stories have never been my thing, I didn’t know anything about Olive – the Oatman massacre only barely registered as being one of those covered wagons traveling west things gone very, very wrong.
I’m glad I read this. It was super interesting – I just Olive had told us more and had been able to tell us more of her story, without being influenced by men (and society?) Fascinating. I cannot imagine what that would have been like – not just the massacre or even living with the Mohave for five years, but the re-entry. That… that might have been worse than all of it put together.