The clan of the cave bear

The first novel in Jean M. Auel's magnificent epic of life on the glacial continent of the last Ice Age, when two kind of human beings, Neanderthal and Cro-Magnon, shared the earth.Its heroine is Ayla, a courageous and indomitable young woman whose story begins when she is a five-year-old orphan adopted by the Clan, a group of Neanderthal. The clan of the cave bear is the first volume in the phenomenally successful Earth's Children series.