Prehistoric Return: Auel's Epic Saga Back at Last

The beginning of Jean Auel's soon-to-be-published The Shelters of Stone (Crown, April), the fifth novel in her classic "Earth's Children" series, finds the Ice Age heroine Ayla and her companion Jondalar exactly where readers left them at the end of the previous book back in 1990. They still sit atop their horses, their pet wolf nearby, in what today would be the Dordogne Valley in France, looking up at a crowd of people armed with spears on the limestone ledge above. Jondalar remains just steps away from coming home after a prolonged period of travel, and Ayla hopes his people, the Zelandonii, will provide a home for her as well. The scene also stands as a homecoming for the author and her legion of loyal fans after 12 long years away.

For anyone who has lived on another literary planet for the past 22 years, Ayla is the Cro-Magnon child orphaned by an earthquake some 25,000 to 30,000 years ago and then adopted by a band of Neanderthals in The Clan of the Cave Bear (1980). She is eventually banished to a living death by a jealous leader and leaves behind a child of mixed blood. The teenager then learns to survive on her own—tames horses, a large wolf, and an even larger cave lion—and saves the handsome Jondalar from sure death in The Valley of Horses (1982). Finally, in The Mammoth Hunters (1985) and The Plains of Passage (1990), the lovers and their animals take on an arduous year-long journey back to Jondalar's people and a place where the pregnant Ayla can, one hopes, raise a family among her own kind.

There is literally and figuratively a world full of people just waiting for this couple to get on with their lives. The series has sold an astounding 34 million copies worldwide over the years. The story of Ayla and Jondalar has been translated into 28 languages, and every book has been a number one best seller here at home as well as in a number of other countries.

Initial plans for The Shelters of Stone suggest that publisher expectations around the world have only been heightened by the extended hiatus. Crown has announced an enormous hardcover first printing of 1.5 million copies for the upcoming book. It has already put out a 75,000-copy special hardcover reprint of The Clan of the Cave Bear, complete with a sneak preview of the first two chapters of Shelters and a 25,000-copy reprint for each of the other three works. In addition, the early fall foreign rights sales for the new book, and reprints of previous titles, hit a hefty $8 million six months before the spectacular international launch scheduled for Dordogne, France, on April 30.

Despite all the global hoopla, nowhere is the new book more anxiously anticipated than in Auel's hometown of Portland, OR, and the 18 branches of the Multnomah County Library (MCL). Ginnie Cooper, the library's director since 1990, confirms how passionate patrons have always been about Auel's work and the author's longtime status as a legitimate "local literary hero." Cooper says people are acutely aware that "Earth's Children" was conceived as a six-book series, and they have never stopped asking for the elusive fifth title or the final one expected to follow. She notes that every indicator points to The Shelters of Stone receiving an extraordinary reception.

"One of the ways we know a book is going to be really popular is by looking at the number of library users who place a hold or reserve on that title," says Cooper, who estimates that the average best seller would tally 100 to 150 holds at Multnomah. "As of the beginning of January, The Shelters of Stone already had 164 holds even though it was not due out for several months. So I expect it to wind up with around 400 holds and rival the popularity of the last Harry Potter book."

Cooper even credits her coming to Portland to a memorable 1980 speech by Auel (pronounced owl). Cooper, then a library director in Kenosha, WI, heard Auel talk at a conference about how she managed to write her recently published first book, The Clan of the Cave Bear. The new author's powerful words painted an image of the MCL that stayed with Cooper for a decade.

"Jean was speaking with gratitude for the role her public library had played to make it possible for somebody like her—without anthropological training, working another job, raising a large family with five children—to write this major novel about prehistoric times," recalls Cooper, who now considers Auel a good friend. "She credited the Multnomah County Library with helping to make the book so complete in her head. I was thinking, 'Wow, this library must be an amazing place to be able to offer all that.'"

Auel is also quick to acknowledge the MCL as being at least the incubator, if not the birthplace, of her series and writing career. In a recent interview with Library Journal, she spoke about every aspect of her life as a novelist and what it took to research and write this latest book. But she started her comments with Multnomah County Library, where the whole thing began.

"I went to Multnomah Library in 1977 to research a short story and came home with my first couple of armloads of books," says Auel, sitting in the kitchen of her cliffside condominium that looks out on the city of Portland and four surrounding mountains. "All that library research made me realize I had at least a book, which later turned into the plans for a six-book series. After writing my first draft of that original novel, then called Earth's Children, I knew I had to go back to the library to get books that would teach me to write fiction. Then I went back again for books on getting published."

Auel's original premise for the short story featured an attractive heroine living with people we would consider different or ugly, but to them she is the different one. The author had a vague idea about setting the story in prehistoric times because she thought of Neanderthals, in that half-animal Hollywood stereotype, as being truly different. But she soon became frustrated by her total lack of knowledge about the way they looked, behaved, or lived. That sent her to Multnomah in search of an encyclopedia and eventually to a seminal book on archaeology.

"The encyclopedia revealed the most recent time in history when two phases of human evolution existed together—and one of those peoples were us," says Auel, who learned library skills pursuing her MBA. "This felt like something I could really write about. It also gave me all the key terms—upper Paleolithic, late Pleistocene Epoch, Cro-Magnon, interstadial. Then I read archaeologist Ralph Solecki's book on his dig in the Shanidar Cave in Iraq. The Shanidar Cave became the model for the Clan of the Cave Bear society."

After the success of her first book, the author formed relationships with several prominent scientists in the field and periodically went to Europe to see locales or important finds firsthand. She even worked digs and found half a 30,000-year-old Cro-Magnon blade while researching The Shelters of Stone. But it was a trip to the dramatic Lascaux Cave in France that produced a pivotal part of the current book. Ayla discovers this exact cave, and it becomes an important, highly spiritual place for Jondalar's people.

Lascaux Cave is unusually open, appearing to be mostly white owing to calcium carbonates that form into clear crystals on the walls. Amazingly vivid paintings, uneroded by time, decorate several areas. In the book, Ayla supposedly finds the cave before the paintings exist, and religious leaders believe it to be the pure white womb of the Great Earth Mother herself. The cave also gives the Zelandonii artists a magnificent space to fill down the line. But it was the contrast between the white walls and startling paintings that first took the author's breath away.

"The original was so stunning, so overwhelming, that my eyes filled with tears and ahhh!" says Auel, finishing with a long gasp. "I could hardly breathe. I knew it had to be in the book."

Although field trips are obviously beneficial, the author still relies mostly on printed material for her information and ideas. But she rarely spends time these days working at the public library. "Now I just buy the books—one of the luxuries I can afford," says Auel, who also owns a beach house and a place in Portland. "I have a research library of 2000 to 3000 books and over 2000 articles in my files. I now get signed, original papers from some of these specialists."

All the books in the series are heavily laden with details on every aspect of the late Pleistocene Epoch, its people, and the land they inhabit. Yet, the novelist insists on digging every fact out on her own. She sees it as an essential part of the writing process.

"I don't use research assistants," says Auel emphatically. "They won't be able to read something and know what it might trigger in my brain. It might be something crucial I can use for the story. I need to get in there and read it on my own." When pressed, Auel admits to enjoying the huge amount of time she invests in tracking down material. "The research is actually fun, and the writing seems like hard work," she confesses. "Research is the ice cream—the dessert—and I get to have it first."

There have been times over the past dozen years when Auel has found it hard to get back to writing. She has spent large blocks of time with her extensive family, traveling to exotic locales, filling the demands of fame, and doing research. But once she starts writing in earnest the schedule can be intense.

"I go to work at about 11:30 p.m. as my husband Ray goes off to bed," says Auel, who often sleeps until two in the afternoon. "I will write until six, even eight in the morning. When I see the sun come up, I know it is time to stop."

As the end of the book approaches, the author can sense the story pulling her along. "I get into this kind of Zen state where I am going for maybe 28 hours," she says, then gives a giddy laugh. "Then I will go to bed for two hours and wake up wired and write for another ten hours more. Then I go to sleep for another two hours and wake up wired again and go for another whatever."

Popular appeal of the series aside, some critics over the years have homed in on two sensitive areas—claims that the characters often sound too modern and charges that too much research is offered in huge chunks at a time. "These critics should do their homework," says the author, taking on the first issue. "In these books we are talking about modern man. These Cro-Magnon people have the same range of intelligence, facility with language, and psychological responses as people today."

Auel tried to show patience with the second criticism. "In a modern novel you can simply write, 'I got into my car and drove to the city for lunch.' But in a prehistoric story you have to hunt and kill an animal and find a way to build a fire to cook it. How and why you do this is not so clear. If this ingredient is not there, it doesn't work for me. So I write these books the way I want to read them!" she says, building to a shout and then laughing.

Critics and fans alike are already wondering how long they will have to wait for the final book in the series. Auel is confident that it will be finished much more quickly than the current one. She wrote a rough draft of the last two books before polishing off The Shelters of Stone.

When the author finished the rough draft of the sixth book she cried—actually writing the last words for the series should be worse. "I feel like I have been living with Ayla all my life," says Auel, with a catch in her voice. "She is a friend who is always there. I have no doubt it will be hard on me. That means I have to go find someone else."

Auel will be 66 years old by the time The Shelters of Stone comes out. But she is overflowing with ideas for what to write next. However, two ideas for novels seemed to top the list.

"What made us go from hunter-gatherers to farmers?" asks the writer. "That would be a book on the Neolithic period of 5000 to 10,000 years ago. I also think the whole Egyptian story would be fascinating. What were the forces that caused a nation to first come together that still exists after 3000 years?"

By the way, Auel makes it clear that all projects after "Earth's Children" will be individual novels. "No more series! No more series!" she shouts. "It would take me until I was 150!"