Jean Auel

Born Jean Marie Untinen in Chicago, she was the second of five children of a housepainter. Today, Jean Auel is a story-writing phenomenon whose series of novels set in prehistoric Europe have sold nearly 50 million copies worldwide. A grandmother of nine, she put in 12 years of night school at the University of Portland; Jean Auel did not even try to write a book until she was past the age of 40. She quit work as a credit manager, and in 1977, "got the idea for a saga about a young woman's battle to survive in the early Cro Magnon era of the Ice Age." Jean Auel immersed herself in the history of the Ice Age. She joined a survival class to learn how to construct an ice cave, and researched primitive methods of making fire, tanning leather, and knapping stone from the aboriginal skills expert Jim Riggs. The first in her Earth's Children series, "The Clan of the Cave Bear" was rejected by several publishers, but eventually was sold to Crown Publishers for $130,000 (Crown Publishers paid Auel $25 million for the rights to publish her second novel). Her first book was an overnight sensation and sold more than five million copies. After the success of her first novel, Jean Auel traveled to the sites of prehistoric ruins and relics and her research took her across Europe from France to the Ukraine. She went on to author the international best sellers, "The Valley of Horses" (1982), "The Mammoth Hunters" (1985), "The Plains of Passage" (1990), "The Shelters of Stone" (2002), and "The Land of Painted Caves" (2011). Jean Auel addressed the student delegates at the 1993 Achievement Summit in Glacier National Park about her path to success as a novelist.