The SealEaters, 20,000 BC

by Bonnye Matthews

Overview

The SealEaters, 20,000 BC is the last of the planned books in the Winds of Change Series on the Peopling of the Americas. The time period is the onset of the last Ice Age which ends the Time of Peace and ushers in the Time of War on earth. The Time of War continues today. The novel is a survival story of the Solutreans in southern France/northern Spain. due to advancing ice sheets, seals from the north have beached on their shores and the SealEaters have come to depend on them for their major food source. The SealEaters face advancing ice from the north, warring groups beyond the mountains to the east and south. In search of a new land, a small number of SealEaters travel the arc formed by the ice sheets, eating seals along the way across the Atlantic Ocean to the east coast of what is now North America, a coast very different from what we know today. They survey the land and groups of people living there, trying to find a new living place. There are differences among the Solutreans and the people they meet in the new land when compared to the People in the first four books. The SealEaters' group cohesiveness has disintegrated when compared to the People of the preceding books. The SealEaters, 20,000 BC tells the tale of this effort to find a new land.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594336003
Publisher:	Publication Consultants
Publication date:	01/15/2016
Series:	Winds of Change , #5
Pages:	354
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Bonnye Matthews is the author of the Winds of Change Series on the Peopling of the Americas. She studied the peopling of the Americas and began to write the series after five years of intense research. Novels contain her bibliography, and it's available on her website, http://www.booksbybonnye.com. Her study is on-going. Each book is an award winner. She lives in the greater Anchorage, Alaska area in the United States. Bonnye Matthews also is developing a brief DVD documentary for each book. She is involved in book signings and speaking events as far ranging from Alaska as Seattle, Washington, Richmond, Virginia, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Her passion for her subject shows in her writing and speaking events.

Editorial Reviews

2016-02-01
An epic novel examines a possible prehistoric immigration to the Americas. In this volume, Matthews (Tuksook's Story, 2014, etc.) introduces a group of heroes who call themselves the SealEaters, who need to leave their coastal home before encroaching glaciers push them into the sea. An expedition sets out to inspect the land on the far side of the ocean in search of a new home. When the members reach land, they split up—not least because Reg, the leader, is abusive and hated—and subsequent chapters follow their individual paths. In one section, a SealEater named Murke assesses the terrain: "We loved the great grassland, but it was very time consuming to cross it to the land where the trees began. It was, we thought, not a place for the SealEaters to live. We needed to have the closeness of forest." The SealEaters encounter tribes already living in the area, some hostile and others willing to welcome the immigrants. The SealEaters teach their hosts how to make their unique spear points, and several marry into the communities they find. Others return to bring the rest of their people to the new world, and find that the tribe has grown stronger thanks to Reg's absence. Matthews, a thorough researcher, draws a detailed portrait of ice age life, particularly as she narrates the creation of the spear points: "He twisted the stone back and forth looking across the edges he'd made. He'd cease tapping and rub briskly a stone across the newly formed edge to dull it." The prose, however, is often disjointed ("She smiled. She made the sign for breaking a stick or bone. She shook her head negatively"; "He was reaching the end of his patience and available points to make") and some of the primitive terminology ("thinking place" for "mind" and "go black" for "sleep") can be grating. Readers seeking dynamic female characters will not find them among the primarily male protagonists, who engage with the women as wives to be taken. Despite these flaws, Matthews has produced an adventure story that plausibly explores a leading theory of human migration, bringing an imagination to the scant facts contained in the archaeological record. The multitude of characters moves the book in the direction of a saga, allowing it to represent a wide experience of prehistory. An engaging, though unpolished tale of an ice age migration.

Kirkus Reviews