It covers her years from age five to age fourteen-ish and during this time she becomes a woman of the clan, a medicine woman and a mother of a 'deformed' half-cast son, and a highly respected woman of the clan despite being the victim of hate and despisal from the son of the clan chief. It is a story of estrangement and acceptance and of being the odd one out. It is the story of her learning the clans ways whilst also trying to stay true to herself. This is Aylas story of being a strange little girl, born of the 'others', a new young race who are a threat to the ancient clan by simply being more adaptable. She is then discovered by a clan of neanderthals who had lost their cave and home in the earth quake and are searching out a new one. Driven out of hiding by thirst she collapses by the riverside. She gets mauled by a cavelion and only survives by dint of fitting into a narrow crevise where the giant lion could not fit and out-waiting it. She follows a river for days, not dying of dehydration but slowly losing to starvation. We are introduces to Ayla, a 5 year old girl homo sapien playing in a river when a massive earth quake occurs that kills her family and leaves her stranded in the wilderness on her own. It's the large peninsula of land jutting into the north side of the black sea.
This is set pretty much entirely in ancient Crimea, Ukraine. It has of course been fleshed out and had artistic license added to it but nothing in these books is outside the realms of the possible, and that frankly is lovely. Everything from the weather, lay of the land, plants, animals, life styles of our ancient ancestors is as accurate to that time line as historians, archaeologists and scientists have been able to confirm using what discoveries they've made. This is aided by the extensive research that Auel did into the archaeological and natural history of the regions she has written about.
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