Olive
A fictional Account of the Life of Olive Ann Oatman
by
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Suddenly, there was a horrible shriek and the Indians leapt into the air shouting,
“Yakoa, Yakoa!”
They produced war clubs from under their wolf skins and ran screaming and swinging their clubs toward Royce Oatman. Lorenzo was the first to fall to the ground under a blow from a war club. Later, they took his hat and shoes and dragged him to the brink of the hill by his feet. Olive was sure they would throw him over the edge to the rocks below and she turned her head, unable to look.
Olive watched in horror as a huge, painted buck lunged at her elder sister, Lucy, ripping the front of her dress from neck to waist. She screamed and raked the left side of his face with her fingernails. He put his hand to his face and when he drew it away and saw his blood-stained fingers, his face contorted in rage. He uttered a guttural sound like a wounded animal and bent quickly to pick up his club. As he straightened up, Lucy kicked him in the crotch with her steel-toed boot, sending him backward, clutching his crotch and howling. He regained his footing, lunged forward and swung his club with tremendous force, crushing the side of Lucy’s face. She fell to her knees and her attacker raised his club and lowered it squarely in the center of her head splitting her skull with a dull, cracking sound. Olive screamed and vomited into the hard-packed sand.
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About the Book
In February of 1851, when Royce Oatman makes the fatal decision to take his pregnant wife and seven children across the Arizona desert alone in his haste to get to California, they are attacked and slaughtered by Tonto Apaches. Two of the children, Olive, fourteen and Mary Ann, eight, are captured and taken to the Apache village where they endure a year of slavery and deprivation. They are purchased by the daughter of the Chief of the Mojaves and taken to the Mojave village where they receive somewhat better treatment but are still slaves. After Mary Ann dies in a famine, Olive, if she is to survive, must assimilate into the Mojave tribe. She witnesses scenes of torture and savagery that disparage any thoughts of escape. When, after five years of captivity, she is suddenly returned to civilization, she must re-learn the ways of white society and never reveal the secrets of her past. Although every attempt is made to portray her as ‘the virgin captive,’ rumors persist until, in a dramatic climax, Olive reveals the shocking truth to her husband.
About the Author
Jeanne Packer was born in the Bronx, New York City. She migrated to California with her parents and sister in 1948. She is the mother of three, grandmother of three and the great-grandmother of two. She divides her time between Sky Valley, California and Salt Spring Island, B.C. While raising three children, she wrote feature stories for Peninsula Newspapers, Inc. highlighting the accomplishments of ordinary people. She loves gardening and has written articles for gardening magazines. She has been a restaurateur and a real estate broker. “Olive” is her first novel. She is currently working on a second novel, a true story of a plucky Irish girl raised in a convent who comes to America in the early 1920’s as a governess for a wealthy Boston family. She receives a summons from the Irish nun who raised her which takes her to Australia to marry a man she has never met. Although born with a birth defect that leaves her with a permanent limp, and saddled with an intellectually-challenged husband, she manages to build a small fortune, penny by penny, in San Francisco real estate.