âA whole culture is imaginatively and authoritatively illuminatedâ in this âsuspenseful, insightful, poignantâ novel of prehistoric times (Publishers Weekly).
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Twenty thousand years ago, a courageous girl lived in Siberia near Woman Lake, a place you wonât find on any modern map. Only thirteen, Yanan and her companionsâhunters of deer, gatherers of roots and twigsâstruggle to survive the harsh realities of hunger and cold, bound by an unending cycle of birth, kinship, violence, and death.
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As Yanan recounts the terrible adventures of her brief life, she departs on spirit journeys that evoke the lives of the animals to which she and her people are intimately linked. A lyrical novel of our speciesâ prehistory, Reindeer Moon opens up corridors to the imagination that lead us back to the long-forgotten echoes of our distant human past.
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âUnforgettable . . . Reindeer Moon beautifully resurrects a lost world of merciless magnificence. Dozens of memorable characters live and die in this moving tale, which should become a classic.â âChicago Tribune Book World
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âThose familiar with the authorâs landmark study, The Harmless People, will not be surprised at the range of anthropological information she brings to her first novel, or at the lucidity of her prose. What will astonish, engross and move readers in her narrative of a group of hunter-gatherers who lived 20,000 years ago is the dramatic immediacy of the story and the depth and range of character development.â âPublishers Weekly