MOTHER EARTH, FATHER SKY
Sue Harrison
New York: Doubleday, 1990
288 pp., $18.95
Contemporary and historical romance novels have long been staples of the publishing industry. If you're not familiar with the genre, those are the books that have cover designs featuring a man with Arnold Schwarzenegger's body, Paul Newman's eyes, Kevin Costner's innocence, and Tom Berenger's smoldering sexiness.
Typically, he has a woman in his arms and she looks (if you can imagine it) like a virginal Joan Collins. Part of her dress is torn, but she doesn't notice. She's too busy gazing into Paul's eyes, a look somewhere between fear and anticipation on her face. Known also as bodice rippers, these books are directed at women, the largest audience for fiction.
About a decade ago, Jean M. Auel created a new category for this genre - the first prehistoric romance. Her Clan of the Cave Bear was the story of Ayla, sole survivor of her tribe, out on her own. It was an instantaneous best seller, as were the next two in the series.
Sue Harrison's first novel, Mother Earth, Father Sky, is strikingly similar to Clan. It, too, is set thousands of years ago and features a young heroine, Chagak, likely to appeal to female readers. Like Clan, it is extensively researched and the first of a projected series. And, like Ayla's world, Chagak's pleasant existence is suddenly shattered, forcing her alone into the world.
Chagak, who is thirteen years old and has just become engaged, is in the fields when her people are massacred by invaders. She properly buries the dead so they can meet their ancestors, and briefly contemplates suicide.
But there is another survivor she must care for, her infant brother, who is in poor health. So she sets out in an ik (open-top skin boat) for the home of her maternal grandfather, who heads the Whale Hunters. It is an arduous journey for a young woman. En route, she stops at a beach where she meets a hermit, an elderly storyteller and ivory carver thought to have magical powers.
He looks after her, comforts her when her brother dies, and teaches her survival skills. But he's unable to prevent a forced marriage to Man-who-kills a warrior of the tribe that killed her people, who, like Chagak, stopped at that beach by chance. Shortly thereafter, the two dispatch Man-who-kills to the Murderer-in-the-Sky hunting ground. But Chagak is already pregnant with his child.
Happily, though, Chagak warns her grandfather's village about an impending invasion by Man-who-kills' tribe. She meets a nice young widower, and they live happily ever after - or at least until the next volume of the saga.
Harrison makes a number of first-novel mistakes. She telegraphs her punches, and, as a result, the plotting is sometimes obvious and heavy-handed. The widower is left with an infant, but the child has no one to wet-nurse him. Chagak has just had a child. It doesn't take an anthropologist to figure out that the two will
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