The Oak People

Home, for the hunter-gatherer Oak People, is a cave on the slopes of the Antelope Nose mountain. From their watching place near the cave entrance, they scan the plain below for wild game and look out to the great Salt Water in the distance. They survive by hunting and foraging for edible plants, but their way of life is under threat. The antelope and deer do not come in such numbers as they once did and hunger beckons.

The Oak People gather with the Desert People on the plain at full Moon. At the feast, Ansa, a young woman from the desert, is to be joined with Bidari. When the gathering is over, Ansa will not return with her people to the desert but will instead come to live in the cave of the Oak People, as the mate of Bidari.

Will she be accepted by her new family, once they discover the fearful secret she carries? And who is the wild boy she discovers, living alone on the Antelope Nose? Despite everything that conspires against her, it seems that Ansa is destined to play an important role in the future of the Oak People. A future that is threatened not only by the ever-present vagaries of the natural world but by new, sinister dangers in human form.