To be entirely honest this isn't something that I typically pick up but as I am interested in archaeology I thought I would give it a go and the premise sounded intriguing. I am glad I gave it a try. Following the two parallel story lines of the two women was a really interesting way of doing this and I think it worked well. The writing made it easy to get into and it is quite a unique book. While I did enjoy this, I didn't love it. Something just didn't completely click into place for me. I would still recommend checking this out, if you are interested.

Pub. Date:  April 25, 2017
Publisher:   Little, Brown, and Company

This is a novel about the makings of the female species.  There are two female protagonists.  One lives in the present and the other lives forty thousand years ago.  The author, Claire Cameron, weaves the two female’s very different lives together in flash-backs and flash-forwards.   Cameron writes her novel as if it is a thesis, with a theory that needs to be proved.  Her hypothesis is that our ancestors were strikingly similar to the humans of today.  Her endnotes have an impressive list of references on the subject showing that she did her homework.  This style of writing could be the books weakness as if reading a dissertation.  Instead, her storytelling skills are so good that it is the books strength.  It reads as a historical fiction, a mystery, a past paced suspense tale, and a love story to the human race, with an emphasis on the female’s body ability to create another being.

The modern day woman is a pregnant archaeologist who is racing to get grant funding to continue her work on Neanderthal artifacts before her baby is born.  The bones she finds in her dig are of two bodies and they are a shocking discovery because they are of a female Neanderthal and a human male buried together positioned as if embracing.  In the distant past, the Neanderthal teenage girl is also pregnant.  She is racing to find shelter before her baby is born.  It is crucial that this baby lives since she knows that her species numbers are low.   Her mother taught her that her reason for being born is to reproduce so the “family” can continue.   (Family can mean their immediate family but is also used as their word for all Neanderthals).  It is clear to the reader that the female bones found by the archaeologist are the bones of the female Neanderthal protagonist.  Both the Neanderthal girl and the modern day woman have very difficult births, one without her partner, in a country where she doesn’t speak the language and the other alone in a hole in the earth during a snowstorm.  Both almost lose their life giving birth and have to decide whether to save their own life or the life of their unborn baby.  This type of choice always makes for a thought provoking and heart-tugging read.

By itself, the story of the modern day heroine would have been a good women’s book asking if working women can have it all—a fulfilling career and family life?  Then the author then adds in a post par-tum psychosis, and the archaeologist begins to think about killing her baby.  A temporary madness that makes for an interesting story but it has been written before in “All She Ever Wanted” by Rosalind Noonan and other stories on this subject.  But the story of the Neanderthal girl is so intriguing I sometimes became annoyed when the next chapter focused on the archaeologist.  In the girl’s story, I became lost in the world of 40 thousand years ago when the last families of Neanderthals roamed the earth.  They were incredible people, and I choose to call them people because of what I learned in this book.  Yet, they had animal decentness that modern humans do not have.  Unless desperate, they never killed a baby animal.  They understood that this would disrupt the balance of the order of life because then the baby bison would not grow and continue the circle of life. 

I became fascinated with other side stories in the novel too such as, the girl’s friendship with a tiger too old to hunt.   He would come to visit her like a pet and she would give him strips of meat, usually cooked.  (The Neanderthals would eat raw meat immediately after a successful hunt but once brought home the carcass is cooked).  The Neanderthal girl and the tiger jointly knew that if it came down to their own existence one would kill the other even though they were friends.  It is survival of the fittest with a certain kindness and respect.  Another character that intrigued me is a boy child that the mother Neanderthal took in when she found him lost and orphaned.  He becomes a much loved adopted family member even though they saw him as an odd looking child with something strange about him.   He had impressive qualities that they did not have.  Something about his arms allowed him to throw and hit a target as only an adult could.  Unlike the others, who rarely use their voice to communicate in words, he chattered all day long driving the others crazy.   And a difference that made this reader laugh out loud is that the family worried that when his time came he will never find a mate, because he is such an ugly looking male no female would find him attractive enough to want him.  (I guess Neanderthals were not impressed with human features).

I will not share what happens to each of the female heroines or their babies.  It would be a spoiler.  I will share that one of my favorite parts in the archaeologist’s story is when she is in labor and couldn’t talk with the doctor so they locked eyes and somehow managed to communicate without out words in the ways of the Neanderthals.  This book makes me want to pay attention to my own forgotten senses that are lost to me from lack of use.  I often joke that my sinus and spine pains can tell me when the weather is about to change.   Could this be how modern Homo sapiens modified our alertness to nature?   And can we once again regain instincts that we have lost?   The author made me truly feel for our ancient ancestors as if they were my relatives and not creatures that became extinct.  This is powerful a novel that made me often tear and sometimes laugh all while exploring the concept of what makes us human?

Recent science has been rethinking the way we're originally perceived out distant relatives, indeed related if only by a small margins due to the long ago crossbreeding of their species with homo sapiens. This book does more than rethink, it vividly reimagines the Neanderthals as all too sentient, intelligent and able individuals. While that portrayal might be viewed as too steeped in anthropomorphism, it's nevertheless very compelling, as the book follows one young Neanderthal girl's journey. This takes up majority of the book, minority of it is dedicated to the female archeologist who discovers the remains of the girl some 40 000 years later. There are parallels to their lives that are meant to tie the story together, but they seems too structured and  simplified in a way, for me they added nothing really. Separately, it's possible the archeologist character just didn't do much for me, there isn't a lot there but fanatical dedication to her work, at cost to her relationship and possibly fate of her child (she spends most of the book pregnant), although the book does go to great length to present an uncomfortably realistic view of pregnancy, childbirth and subsequent childcare from a psychological point of view. With exception of the aforementioned overdrawn parallels, the book was well written, interesting and entertaining. For someone with a great interest in the past and evolution in general and Neanderthals in particular this is certainly worth a read. Thanks Netgalley.

In recent memory I stumbled across an article implying modern man is more connected to Neanderthals then most would think.  It was a scientific type article and it mentioned DNA links.  I have often referred to some men as Neanderthal, but of course I did so jokingly (or not).  I was rather fascinated with this account, even though I did not recognize any factual accounts of scientific or archeological proof.  Maybe I just missed it.  The author’s creativity of suggesting how it may have come about just seems to fit, providing an enjoyable read and provoking contemplation of the historical aspects.  Suggestions of the creation of speech also approximates studies I have explored.  The natural instincts of humans both male and female certainly indicate the almost natural act of crossbreeding.  This is a well written account of how it may have been.  Five stars easily.

Thanks to NetGalley and to Little, Brown and Company for the preview copy of this book.

This was a very different story than I had anticipated.  I had thoughts of an archeological dig, with all the movie melodrama that entails. Instead, this was a very curiously moving story of the present day archaeologist juxtaposed with the Neanderthal Girl.  The similarities were striking. What does family mean? What is the role of the provider? How can history inform us of these facts or in some cases misinform? 

The intertwining stories were intriguing on their own merit, but I really enjoyed looking into the mirror and seeing the past/present woman.

Cameron's latest, after the harrowing The Bear, is a slightly easier read than its predecessor. It centers on a Neanderthal girl in  . . . Neanderthal times? . . . who is struggle to survive and to maintain her family traditions. This is interspersed with the story of a (pregnant) archaeologist working on an important dig in France. I found the former much more fascinating--I think I just know too many stories about women struggling in academia and with finding grant funding AND with motherhood, though Cameron certainly nails all of that. But she REALLY nails the Neanderthal girl, and the modern segments put a lot of that story/history in context, so I suppose it all does work together. I also really liked the way she wrapped things up. A far cry from Clan of the Cave Bear. A/A-.

I was very interested in the premise, but it read more like an anthropology textbook than a novel. I didn't finish it.