Synopses & Reviews
Once again Jean M. Auel opens the door of a time long past to reveal an age of wonder and danger at the dawn of the modern human race.
Riding Whinney with Jondalar, the man she loves, and followed by the marea (TM)s colt, Ayla ventures into the land of the Mamutoi a the Mammoth Hunters. She has finally found the Others she has been seeking. Though Ayla must learn their different customs and language, she is adopted because of her remarkable hunting ability, singular healing skills, and uncanny fire-making technique. She finds women friends and painful memories of the Clan she left behind, and meets Ranec, the dark-skinned, magnetic master carver of ivory, whom she cannot refuse a inciting Jondalar to a fierce jealousy that he tries to control by avoiding her.
Throughout the icy winter the tension mounts, but warming weather will bring the great mammoth hunt and the mating rituals of the Summer Meeting, when Ayla must choose to remain with Ranec and the Mamutoi, or to follow Jondalar on a long journey into an unknown future.
Third in the acclaimed Eartha (TM)s ChildrenA(R) series
Synopsis
An epic novel of love, knowledge, jealousy, and hard choices.
Ayla, the independent heroine of the Earth's Children (TM) series, sets out from the valley on Whinney, the horse she tamed. With her is Jondalar, the tall handsome, yellow-haired man she nursed back to health and came to love. Together they meet Mamutoi--the Mammoth Hunters--people like Ayla. But to Ayla, who was raised by the Clan of the Cave Bear, they are the Others. She approaches them with a mixture of fear and curiosity.
It is the Mamutoi master carver of ivory--dark skinned Ranec, flirtatious, artistic, magnetic--who Ayla finds herself drawn to the most. Because of her uncanny control over animals, her healing skills, and the magic firestone she discovers, Ayla is adopted into the Mammoth Hearth by Mamut, the ancient shaman of the Great Earth Mother.
Ayla finds herself torn between her strong feelings for Ranec and her powerful love for the wildly jealous and unsure Jondalar. It is not until after the great mammoth hunt, when Ayla's life is threatened, that a fateful decision is made.