Their odyssey spans a beautiful but sparsely populated and treacherous continent, the windswept grasslands of Ice Age Europe, casting the pair among strangers. With her companion, Jondalar, Ayla sets out on her most dangerous and daring journey-away from the welcoming hearths of the Mammoth Hunters and into the unknown. Auel returns us to the earliest days of humankind and to the captivating adventures of the courageous woman called Ayla. In a brilliant novel as vividly authentic and entertaining as those that came before, Jean M. Auel’s enthralling Earth’s Children® series has become a literary phenomenon, beloved by readers around the world.
(Oct.Librarian note: See an alternate cover edition here. A novel 1.25 million first printing major ad/promo first serial to Ladies' Home Journal BOMC main selection author tour. Nonetheless, this volume is as welcome as letters from a long-lost friend. Such locutions as ``out of the cooking skin into the coals'' or ``Mother's path of milk'' for the Milky Way are coyly anachronistic. A brief encounter with the Neanderthal Clan rekindles the unique charm of the first (and strongest) book. Their enlightened compilation of skills, inventions, therapies and recipes transforms the voyagers into spirit-like personas providing The Others with constant awe. En route, they encounter a variety of problems, yet manage to find panaceas for each. (Would that our ``memory'' were as instinctual as that of the Clan.) The saga continues the cross-continental journey of Ayla, her mate Jondalar and their menagerie to his homeland.
The continuous recitation of flora and fauna, coupled with flashbacks to events in the previous books, becomes somewhat tiresome, however. Auel again describes her characters' travails, a passionate interest of millions of readers, in impeccably researched detail. The long-awaited fourth installment of the Earth's Children series is as warm and inviting as its campfire milieu.
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