Aimée Crocker — heiress, princess, mystic, and author — was a tattooed woman. She might have gotten her first tattoo during one of her four journeys to Hawai‘i or one of her two extended tours of Japan and Singapore.

Leland Stanford stood over what soon be the First Transcontinental Railroad, hemmed in by a crowd of jubilant workers, railroad officials, and two imposing locomotives. A telegraph wire ran from the silver maul in his hands to a single railroad spike. Millions of dollars, almost two decades of work, and an inconceivable amount of human suffering had led to this moment. Stanford grasped the maul and swung…