The Shelters of Stone
Ayla and Jondalar, with their horses and the wolf, complete their journey across Europe and are greeted by the Zelandonii, Jondalar's own people, at the Ninth Cave.
About
The Shelters of Stone is a historical novel by Jean M. Auel, published in 2002 as the fifth book of the Earth's Children series and the sequel to The Plains of Passage. It opens as Ayla and Jondalar reach the Zelandonii, the people Jondalar left years earlier, at their settlement of the Ninth Cave.
The book's subject is acceptance. Ayla was raised by Neanderthals whom the Zelandonii call flatheads and treat as no better than animals, so her history is a problem for the community she wants to join and she has to win over people who have already decided what she is. At the same time her knowledge of healing, the animals she travels with and her pregnancy change her standing within the cave.
Auel writes the novel as a study of a society, working the shelters, clothes, tools and customs of the period into the story as carefully as the relationships. It is a book about a homecoming rather than a journey, and its tension comes from whether a group can be persuaded to see an outsider as one of its own.
Book details
- Author
- Jean M. Auel
- First published
- 2002
- Series
- Earth's Children, book 5
- Subgenre
- Ancient world fiction, Historical fiction, Family saga
- Primary genre
- Historical Fiction
- Tags
- No tags for this book.
- Reading order
- Also on this shelf: The Clan of the Cave Bear (book 1), The Mammoth Hunters (book 3), The Plains of Passage (book 4)
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