[In the following positive review of Ohitika Woman, Monaghan provides an overview of the book and briefly discusses its publishing history.]

More than a decade ago and hard upon the success of Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions, the autobiography of a Lakota shaman that he coauthored, [Richard] Erdoes completed another manuscript. As he relates in his introduction to this volume [Ohitika Woman], that manuscript was rejected by his publisher. "This book is much too radical," the wise editor said. "Mysticism is in. Make her into a witch." Erdoes and Brave Bird (then Crow Dog) refused. That manuscript became the best-selling Lakota Woman (1990), which related Brave Bird's life as a rebellious, hard-drinking reservation girl who gave birth to her first child while a teenager on the embattled Wounded Knee reservation. Lakota Woman closed when Brave Bird was a partner to radical shaman Leonard Crow Dog. Ohitika Woman picks up Brave Bird's life from then to the present. Far from rising above all the problems of poverty and alienation on the reservation, Brave Bird eventually found herself overwhelmed by them. The book opens with Brave Bird crashing, drunk, into a power pole and ends with her "enduring," as she says. In between, we learn of the difficulties facing Native American women today: the domestic brutality, the abandonments, the assaults. But we learn as well of the medicine and rituals that strengthen women of Native American heritage. Despite the pain that courses through it, the book is ultimately hopeful, even if the hope is just that Native American women can continue to endure.