Review: The Blue Tattoo
The Blue Tattoo: The Life of Olive Oatman
Margot Mifflin
Synopsis: When Olive Oatman was thirteen years old, her family left their home in Indiana, and started their journey west. But along the way, they were attacked by members of a tribe of Yavapai Indians. Most of the family was killed, but they took Olive and her younger sister and kept them as slaves, until they traded the two girls to a tribe of Mohave, who cared for them and raised them.
Rating: PG- 14 for scenes of intense violent.
Sensitivity Warning: While there are no actual scenes involving rape, it is discussed.
This one was kind of a let down for me. Olive’s story sounded fascinating, but the execution in the writing just didn’t do it justice.
The first half, that was more focused on Olive’s capture and life with the tribes was really good. I actually wish they had spent more time talking about her life with the tribe. Her return and reunion happen about halfway through the book, and for me, that’s when it really fell flat.
I seemed like the book spent more time talking about what other people thought of her situation than what Olive felt or thought about her experience. It also seemed to go off on weird tangents that only slightly related to Olive. They eventually tie back to her, but they really took the long way getting there. The audiobook was just under 7 hours. I think the amount of time they spent actually talking about Olive could probably be covered in 3-4 hours. I tried to give it a little slack, because they may have been trying to piece together what little information they really had about her. I was just pretty underwhelmed by it.
Olive’s story is fascinating, and totally worth looking up. If you are really interested in the mid to late 1800’s history, you might enjoy the book. I think if I were reading a hard copy of this book instead of listening to an audiobook, I probably would have done a lot of skimming.