This wonderful story was written for children, but I read and enjoyed it as a man of 75 years because it is so well written. An absorbing, intelligent, imaginative adventure informed by the science the author has lived with and her experience of life in appropriate lands.

I’ve followed Alice Roberts’ career with interest ever since I first encountered her work on the TV programme, Time Team, in the early 2000s. She has brought accessible science to a wide world with her sensible and empathetic treatment of historical facts.

The story takes the reader through a journey from a winter camp occupied by a tribe during a time around 30,000 years ago, along a lively river to the camp where many tribes meet for the short summer period. There are encounters with wildlife, some of which is definitely food, with danger, and with a mysterious stranger along the way.

I particularly enjoyed her descriptions of the hunts. Living in a forest where deer and wild boar live, I’ve come to understand how these animals can be observed at close distance by a quiet and cautious walker in the trees. That experience makes it very easy to believe in the accounts of the hunts in the story.

The emotional journey is equally well explored and revealed. And the probable way in which myth and legend led us to religion is cleverly brought to life here. The main protagonist is a girl of twelve years, just at the age where she is no longer treated as a child by her tribe. She exhibits courage, asks questions, explores her surroundings, and wonders about the wider world, as she carries out her tasks throughout the trek to a more comfortable site.

The book is of necessity a work of fiction, since there is no written history of the period in which it is set. But Alice Roberts’ knowledge of that time, her research, her wide understanding of discovered artefacts, archaeological sites, and of human physiology all inform the story to bring it to life in a manner that makes the tale utterly plausible.

Her use of language is apt for the age of potential readers without any sort of condescension, and with enough challenge to help young readers develop a wider vocabulary.

This is a book I’d love to see installed in every school library, and even used alongside textbooks as an aid to understanding that prehistoric period we are slowly beginning to know more fully. In fact, had I been able to read this at the right age, I might well have decided on a career in archaeology instead of the route I took. This is a story many children will love to read for themselves or have read to them by a caring adult.