Excerpt from The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She saw vegetables and herbs hanging high from large frames with many cross pieces, and lower to the ground, meat drying on racks. Somewhat away from other activities was an area scattered with sharp stone chips; for people like Jondalar, she thought, flintknappers who made tools, knives, and spear points.

And everywhere she looked, she saw people. The community that lived under the spacious rock shelter was of a size to match the space. Ayla had grown up in a clan of less than thirty people; at the Clan Gathering, which occurred once every seven years, two hundred people came together for a short period, a huge assembly to her then. Though the Mamutoi Summer Meeting drew a much greater number, the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii alone comprised of over two hundred individuals living together at this one place, was larger than the entire Clan Gathering!

Ayla didn't know how many people were standing around watching them, but she was reminded of the time she had walked with Brun's clan into that congregation of clans and felt all of them looking at her. They had tried to be unobtrusive, but the people who were staring as Marthona led Jondalar, Ayla, and a wolf to her living place weren't so polite about it. They didn't try to look down or glance away. She wondered if she would ever get used to living with so many people close by all the time; she wondered if she wanted to.

Excerpted from The Shelters of Stone by Jean M. Auel Copyright 2002 by Jean M. Auel. Excerpted by permission of Crown, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.