Ayla and Jondalar embark on a journey across an entire continent. Their goal is the Cro-Magnon settlement in southern France, where he lived as a young man. Accompanied by the Wolf, the stallion, Racer, and the mare, Whinney, they brave savage enemies and the dangers of weather and terrain in their search for the place that will become Home.

Ayla and Jondalar have reached home: the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, the old stone age settlement in the region known today as south-west France. Jondalar's family are initially wary of the beautiful young woman he has brought back. After the rigours and dangers that have characterised her life, Ayla yearns for peace and tranquillity.

Forced to leave the Clan and her young son, Ayla sets out to travel the frigid steppes until she finds the valley of horses. Unable to find people like herself, the Cro-Magnons, she settles there and seeks friendship. Far to the west, two young Cro-Magnon brothers have begun a journey. One of them is Jondalar, whose destiny is bound with Ayla's.

Leaving the valley of horses with Jondalar, the handsome man she loves, Ayla embarks on a journey that will lead her to the Mamutoi. But as she settles into this new life among a people disturbingly different, she finds herself drawn to Ranec, their master-carver. She is compelled to make a fateful choice between the two men.

Anthony Beavis is a man inclined to recoil from life. His past is haunted by the death of his best friend Brian and by his entanglement with the manipulative Mary Amberley. Realising that his determined detachment from the world has been motivated not by intellectual honesty but by moral cowardice, Anthony attempts to find a new way to live.

Written in 1842, this comic masterpiece about a mysterious con man and his grotesque victims is one of the major works of Russian literature.