The Land of Painted Caves by Jean M. Auel

★★★★

  

Earth's Children #1 - The Clan of the Cave Bear

Earth's Children #2 - The Valley of the Horses

Earth's Children #3 - The Mammoth Hunters

Earth's Children #4 - The Plains of Passage

Earth's Children #5 - The Shelters of Stone

In the sixth and final book of the Earth's Children series, Ayla and Jondalar are living with the zelandonii of the ninth cave with their young daughter Jonayla.  Ayla has recently been accepted as a acolyte of the Zelandoni and is in training to become a spiritual leader.  Although she is fascinated by the new knowledge and power, she struggles to find a balance between being a wife, mother, and a Zelandoni.  As part of her training, Ayla journeys with her mentor to many sacred sites that include cave ancient cave paintings.  During her calling to chosen as a member of the Zelandoni, she is given a great gift of knowledge that will change the way her people see the world.

After almost ten year, Jean M. Auel finished the sixth book in her series in 2011.  There are resources on her website featuring the most recent novel, including a trailer video.  The author explains many her process of writing the series and the research that she completed over the last twenty-five years.  There are also photographs of some of the places she visited, including various cave paintings.  Here is one of my favorites:

 

After almost 3 1/2 months, I am finally done with the series.  I don't know if I would have made it through reading all six books (mostly because I'm very busy at the moment and they are all over seven-hundred pages!), but I definitely enjoyed listening to the audio books.  This series was a perfect combination of a narration of what life might have been like 25,000 years ago and the story of Ayla's journey to find her own people.  While there were some things that annoyed me a bit (such as repetition of information and Ayla and Jondalar's lack of ability fo communicate) I very much enjoyed the series.

The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel (audio)

 

★★★★

 

Earth's Children #1 - The Clan of the Cave Bear

Earth's Children #2 - The Valley of the Horses

Earth's Children #3 - The Mammoth Hunters

Earth's Children #4 - The Plains of Passage

The fifth book in the Earth's Children series begins with Ayla and Jondalar returning home to Jondalar's people, the Zelandonii.  After a long journey, Ayla is pregnant and the couple are ready to settle down and start a family.   Although she is welcomed by many of Jondalar's family, there are still some that oppose the strange women who is friends with a wolf and her horses.  As the couple travel to the Summer Meeting, Ayla encounters meets more people and is troubled by their negative feelings towards flatheads, the clan that she was raised by.  

 As Ayla begins to spend time with the Zelandonii, she is encouraged to become an Zelandoni, the spiritual leaders that serve the mother.  Many situations arise where Ayla is forced to demonstrate her healing abilities and quick thinking.  Ayla struggles with the decision through out the novel and claims that she wants to focus on her mating to Jondalar and the birth of her daughter.

Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline

★★★
"I learned long ago that loss is not only probable, but inevitable.  I know what it means to lose everything, to let go of one life and find another.  An now I feel, with a strange, deep certainty, that it must be my lot in life to be taught that lesson over and over again."

This novel is the story of two women: Vivian Daly, a 91-year-old women living a quiet life in Maine and Molly, a troubled teenage girl in foster case.  The two meet when Molly begins a community service project helping Vivian clean out her attic.  As she helps Vivian sort through her past, the two realize that they have a lot more in common that they think.

I generally liked this book, but I guess I expected a bit more from it.  Too high of expectations?  I don't know.  It was interested to read about the orphan trains, a time in the history of the United States that I was not familiar with.  I was expecting to learn more about this and was surprised that it ended up being a very small part of the novel - the story focused more on the after affects of being a child of the system.  I felt that there was a lot more to the history of the orphan trains that they author showed.

I enjoyed Vivian's story a lot, but I felt the dialogue and story of Molly were a lacking something.  It felt more like a hallmark movie to me and, even though the two stories had many similarities, they didn't always fit together.   It reads very much like a young adult novel and I'm not sure why it isn't categorized as such.  I've seem to have read a lot of novels lately with duel narrators in the past and present - some of them work great, but this one just didn't live up to my expectations.

We read this as the March 2016 selection for the Germantown Community Library Adult Book Club.