The story started with a photo album. Onalea Gilbertson was flipping through a book of old family pictures when she saw photos of her grandmother, Blanche — not as the person Gilbertson had known, but as the young woman she used to be. From that moment forward, Gilbertson was set irreversibly upon the path that would lead to Blanche: The Bittersweet Life of a Wild Prairie Dame.