Word: auel
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...authors have, of course, done their homework, but neither anywhere near as diligently as, say, Jean Auel (Clan of the Cave Bear); they get C's at best. Despite their authoritative tone, these books are mines of misinformation--and not just in detail. They are to paleoanthropology what Indiana Jones is to archaeology--pure fantasy constructs. And while this may sound like carping on my part, given that these are, after all, works of fiction, it's fair to point out that no scientist likes to see his field of study caricatured--all the more so when the caricaturists have...
...have tried harder than Jean Auel, the Oregon chronicler of Ice Age romance, to fathom the mysteries of Cro-Magnon life. From her 1980 best seller, The Clan of the Cave Bear, through three popular sequels, including the just-published The Plains of Passage, Auel has fleshed out the stone-and- bone discoveries of archaeology to create a fully realized world for her prehistoric heroine, Ayla. In the latest 757-page volume, Ayla sets forth from her home among the Mammoth Hunters of the Eurasian steppes and, braving blizzards, a locust swarm and a fall into a glacier crevasse, reaches...
Prehistory is not only Auel's passion: it has proved improbably profitable. A former credit manager at a Portland electronics firm, the mother of five, then 40, had never written a word of fiction when the idea for an Ice Age epic popped into her head in 1977. From an outline scribbled at the kitchen table grew a publishing phenomenon. The first three books have sold more than 20 million copies worldwide and have been translated into 18 languages. The Plains of Passage, Auel's first book since 1985, has a 1.4 million-copy advance sale. Crown Publishers has reportedly...
...further escapades of Ayla and her blond boyfriend, Jondalar the toolmaker, are set in the Dordogne, where Auel has been exploring caves and sifting dirt on an archaeological dig. "I found some pieces of flint and a reindeer milk tooth," she says proudly, as she huffs up a path to an Ice Age rock shelter. Far below, a narrow valley is bathed in mist. On a forested bluff, a medieval fortress glows in pale yellow light. "The vegetation was different then," she says. "But I need to know the lay of the land, where the ridges are, where the high...
...days later, a French archaeologist guides Auel through Laugerie Haute, a vast excavation site under a cliff. She asks for details about how hearths were spaced, seeking hints on how families may have guarded their privacy. "This will be Jondalar's apartment building," she says. At Font-de-Gaume, a grotto of magnificent prehistoric artwork, she examines a painting of a wolf: "I have a feeling this will be Ayla's cave." It fits, since the adventurer travels with a wolf, albeit one she has trained to behave uncannily like a golden retriever...