One of my absolute favorite authors is Jean M. Auel. Her historical fiction is so remarkably well written that
you feel that you are truly there with pre-historic humans living life with them. She is a master in my eyes.
Jean Marie Auel was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 18, 1936. The second of five children of Neil Solomon Untinen, and Martha Wirtanen. Jean and her husband, Ray Bernard Auel, have five children and live in Portland, Oregon.
Auel has been a member of Mensa since 1964. She attended Portland State University and the University of Portland. While studying, she worked as a clerk (1965-1966), a circuit board designer (1966-1973), technical writer (1973-1974), and a credit manager at Tektronix (1974-1976). She earned an MBA in 1976 and has received honorary degrees from the University of Maine and Mount Vernon College for Women.
In 1977, Auel began extensive library research of the Ice Age for her first book. She joined a survival class to learn how to construct an ice cave, and learned primitive methods of making fire, tanning leather, and knapping stone from aboriginal skills expert Jim Riggs. Clan of the Cave Bear was nominated for numerous literary awards, including an American Booksellers Association nomination for best first novel.
After the success of the first book, Auel was able to travel to prehistoric sites and to meet many of the experts with whom she had been corresponding. Her research has taken her across Europe from France to Ukraine, including most of what Marija Gimbutas called Old Europe. She has developed a close friendship with Dr. Jean Clottes of France who was responsible for, among many other things, the exploration of the Cosquer Cave discovered in 1985 and the Chauvet Cave discovered in 1994.
Jean Auel’s books have been commended for their anthropological authenticity and their ethnobotanical accuracy.
Earth’s children Series:
- The Clan of the Cave Bear, 1980
- The Valley of Horses, 1982
- The Mammoth Hunters, 1985
- The Plains of Passage, 1990
- The Shelters of Stone, 2002
