The Clan of the cave bear is the first of Jean Auel's Earth's children series. Ayla, a tall, blond, blue-eyed girl lost her family in an earthquake. She is nurtured and protected by some members of the Clan, but there are those who would cast her out because of her strange and threatening ways. Ayla's adventures 25,000 years ago include details of the world as it might have been.

Ayla and Jondalar embark on a journey that takes them to the Mamutoi, the Mammoth Hunters, and Ayla must make a fateful choice between two men--Jondalar and Ranec, the Mamutoi's master carver, in a story of Ice Age Europe.