Reading this novel several times, I have been impressed with the incredible attention to detail Jean M Auel uses to describe
the lives of ancient peoples, their terrain, everyday ways, spiritual traditions and extensive healing lore. Similarly compelling was the exquisite casting of Ayla, whose childhood and traumas capture our hearts and imagination. I loaned my tattered copy to many who would not otherwise have read it but who went on to buy the series. Women were standing by their cooking pans holding the book in one hand, unable to put it down for a moment. Ayla, a five year old, is abandoned when her parents die in an
earthquake. She is found in a near-death state, taken in and brought up by the clan, a Neanderthal people, in search of a new home after that same earthquake had demolished theirs. Ayla's charm yet her downfall, is that she is so different from the clan. They come to allow her differences with unusual acceptance, albeit with great deliberation. How she painstakingly endeavours to fit into this culture, particularly because of the love she bears her adoptive family is a remarkable journey for her, for the clan and for us. This is a story that deals extensively with communication and memory, often in ways we have lost. The clan's use of body language in subtle gestures, which make it impossible to lie, offer Ayla a start in life that, with her own innate
ability to challenge and be inventive, make her an extraordinary woman and role model for all times.This author's true majesty is the ability for the distant past to seem as real and present as if we, now, were living it. The heartbreak we are left with as the book ends eases knowing the series is to continue.