I purchased this copy of "The Clan of the Cave Bear" to help complete the set of "Earth's Children" books. My first reading of it was a library book. I loved the series and decided to own and reread them all. Jean Auel is amazing and I look forward to another book.

When young Ayla's parents are killed in an earthquake, the 5-year-old is left to wander the pre-historic earth on her own. She roams for days, looking for other people, following a stream into the vast wilderness. Overcome by hunger and thirst, Ayla is attacked by a lion. Narrowly escaping death, the small girl manages to squeeze herself into a crevice to hide from the lion. The lion's paw can fit into the crevice and the lion scratches Ayla, leaving severe gashes. Thirst finally drives her from her hiding place and she passes out near a stream.

At the same time, the Clan of the Cave Bear, the neolithic peoples we think of as "cavemen" happen upon the dying child. The Clan's medicine woman, Iza, takes pity on the child, even though she is of the Others, and begs the Clan leader to let her nurse the child back to health. Grudgingly, Iza is allowed to care for the child and Ayla is eventually accepted as part of the Clan. What appears as a great stroke of luck for the child, being saved by the Clan, also becomes one of the hardest things Ayla will ever have to do. She must learn to speak the Clan's language, a language not of words, but of gestures and sounds. She has to learn Clan customs and taboos and how to behave as a proper Clan child. If all of that weren't enough, Ayla also has to deal with the mockery and scorn of the Clan leader's son, Broud. Broud hates Ayla and does everything within his power to torment the little girl.

As Ayla grows older, Iza trains Ayla in the ways of the medicine woman to ensure Ayla a place in the Clan when Iza and her brother Creb, Ayla's adopted parents, die. In secret, Ayla begins learning to care for herself. She finds an old sling that was discarded by one of the Clansmen. Ayla teaches herself how to use the sling, which is strictly forbidden by Clan rules.

As Ayla continues to grow older, she struggles with her own place in the Clan, a group to which she doesn't belong. She tests the boundaries and borders of the group dynamic and in some cases, she pays a terrible price for learning those lessons.

Friends have been recommending this novel to me for years, but I was somewhat reluctant to pick it up. I had seen the horrible Darryl Hannah movie that was made in the late '80s, and though I shouldn't have, I judged the book by the movie. Recently, though, it was recommended to me once again and I decided I would give it a whirl. I am completely glad that I did. The Clan of the Cave Bear was totally and completely spellbinding. I didn't want to put the book down. Jean M. Auel, the author, is quite talented. She brings the characters and the settings to life in such a vivid manner that the reader forgets their modern surroundings while reading and is transported to the ancient world of the Clan. Her moving and beautiful portrayal of the Clan and Ayla are simply magnificent.

I highly recommend this book to everyone.

This book is AWESOME!!!This little girl gets homeless and parentless by a huge earthquake.Then she gets attacked by a mountain lion!!Cold,hungry, and hurt she is found by a group of hunters and gathers who call themselves The Clan. They take her in and call her Ayla. The medicine woman called Iza took her in as her own.When Ayla starts getting more mature, she starts to do man stuff, which is forbidding.What will happen to Ayla? To find out, you have to read the book!!!!!!!

THE CLAN OF THE CAVE BEAR is the first book in Jean Auel's series Earth's Children. Over the years, many friends have suggested this series to me, so I've meant to read it for a long time and finally did just that. In reading, it is important to remember this is speculative fiction, based loosely on fact, and not fact.

Throughout the book, Auel makes good use of her knowledge of medicinal herbs, landscapes and climates. Little idiosyncracies can usually be overlooked, like the use of plants native to North America instead of Europe where the stories take place, discussion on land masses and bodies of water which aren't consistent with what we now know can usually be overlooked, and so on.

Auel's strength is that she enables the reader to see life as it might have been lived by our ancestors during the last Ice Age. She makes you wonder about behavior of ancient man, what is must have been like to sit under unpolluted skies or spend the winter in a cave. While a cave may be pretty damp and cold, the damp and cold may be the least of your worries as you'd also yave to worry about food supplies as winter progressed and may also have to fend off wild animals like a cave lion.

Auel doesn't mention the clan of the cave bear by name but ones senses they are Neanderthals, and the "others" are closer to what we'd consider 'modern' humans. Auel's contrast between the traditional people who relied on memory for survival versus the new people who could think and reason and viewed the world in terms of "cause and effect" is insightful and profound. But what if the world isn't really cause and effect? A good question.

This saga is a creative story and is probably the tightest book in the series (mostly before Ayla becomes a bit of a "Mary Sue" character. It also has some absolutely fascinating descriptions of what prehistoric life might have been like - it's even well researched, though now some of the theories that Auel decided to go with are outdated.