She is delighted when she meets Zelandoni, the spiritual leader of her people, a fellow healer with whom she can share her medicinal skills. Jondalar's family are initially wary of the beautiful young woman he has brought back, with her strange accent and her tame wolf and horses. Ayla has much to learn from the Zelandonii as well as much to teach them. Accompanied by the half-tame Wolf, the superb stallion, Racer, and the mare, Whinney, they brave both savage enemies and the elemental dangers of weather and terrain in their search for the place that will become Home.Īyla and Jondalar have reached home: the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, the old stone age settlement in the region known today as south-west France. Their goal is the Cro-Magnon settlement in what is now southern France where Jondalar lived as a young man. Ultimately, she is compelled to make a fateful choice between the two men.Īyla and Jondalar leave the safety of the lands of the Mammoth Hunters and embark on a seemingly impossible journey across an entire continent. But as she settles into this new life among a people at first strange and disturbingly different, Ayla finds herself irresistibly drawn to Ranec, their master-carver. Leaving the valley of horses with Jondalar, the handsome man she has nursed back to health and come to love, Ayla embarks on a journey that will lead her to the Mamutoi the Mammoth Hunters. Immerse yourself in a world dictated by the demands of survival in a hostile environment, and be swept away in an epic tale of love, identity and struggle. See how the Clan's wary suspicion is gradually transformed into acceptance of this girl, so different from them, under the guidance of its medicine woman Iza and its wise holy man Creb. Follow Ayla, a Cro-Magnon child who loses her parents in an earthquake and is adopted by a tribe of Neanderthal, the Clan. Leave 21st century London and go back to Ice Age Europe. Jean Auel's imaginative reconstruction of pre-historic life, rich in detail of language, culture, myth and ritual, has become a set text in schools and colleges around the world. One of them is Jondalar, whose destiny is bound inextricably with Ayla's.

But far to the west, two young Cro-Magnon brothers have begun a journey. First she adopts a young filly, then a wounded lion cub. Unable to find people like herself, the Cro-Magnons, she settles there and seeks friendship elsewhere. Forced to leave the Clan and her young son, Ayla sets out alone to travel the frigid steppes until she finds the valley of horses.

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