The Last Matriarch [Hardcover]

Sharman Apt Russell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2000

Over eleven thousand years ago the plains of the great Southwest were covered with sweet long-season grass and inhabited by camels, bison, mammoths, dire wolves, and the hunter gatherers we now call the Clovis people. This story of Willow, Jak, Etol, and their clan takes place in a land that we unconsciously recognize, and shows us people whose needs, hopes, and fears are our own. They live in a world where communication with animals, plants, and even stones is not only possible but essential for survival. Willow's life path echoes that of Half Ear and Red Fur, the matriarchs of the woolly mammoth herd. By joining their stories, Russell explores an archaeological puzzle: the extinction of nearly eighty percent of large land mammals at the end of the Pleistocene. The meaning of being human lies at the heart of the puzzle.

Russell's imaginative reconstruction of the world of Willow and her clan illumines the tribal self--the basket maker, the mammoth hunter, the healer, the shaman--that still lives in each of us.

"Books like this one can teach us not only the facts of the Paleolithic past, but also allow us to share the experiences of our ancestors. The Last Matriarch does both and does them beautifully."--Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, author of Reindeer Moon

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the tradition of Jean Auel, this well-researched novel authentically recreates the world of the Clovis people, hunters and gatherers who lived on the Southwestern plains of North America more than 11,000 years ago. Willow, one of the clan elders, tells the story of her youth, a time when abundant bison, camels, mammoths and lions roamed. After her husband, Jak, is killed by a mammoth during a hunt, the strong-willed Willow is obliged to become the second wife of Etol, Jak's brother, who can provide for her children, Ali and Chi. Each spring, the group travels to perform tribal rites and meet with healers, shamans and storytellers. Here they connect with other camps, in friendship, trade or competition, often finding mates for their offspring. Central to the lives of these prehistoric people is an intuitive communication with the natural world; for example, Willow hears the history of Half Ear, a great woolly mammoth who is the matriarch of her herd, through a necklace made of the animal's ivory. Other tales that mirror Willow's are told through beads, bear skins and plants; these are beautifully used to diversify the narrative, making poetic, imaginative statements about the harmonious relationship humans and nature once enjoyed. But in this wild environment, the death rate is high; bears and lions snatch away children, women die in childbirth and men are killed in stampedes. Living to a rare old age of 60, Willow reflects on the changing relationship between her family and the plains. "Now the land itself seemed to ripple, shimmering with emptiness. These children had never seen a tapir. They had never seen a mammoth." Russell (Song of the Fluteplayer, etc.) mournfully but responsibly addresses the mystery of how so many large land animals at the close of the Pleistocene era became extinct, and intelligently speculates on how humans interacted with these vanished species and each other, and how they faced the inexorable transformation of the land. (Mar.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

More than 11,000 years ago, the American Southwest was not yet desert. It was a beckoning prairie whose tall grass fed great mammoths as well as the smaller bison and camels that in turn provided food for humans and other carnivores. In this intriguing novel, Russell proposes an early ecological disaster that ended in the extinction of the mammoth as well as other, smaller creatures. Linking the story of a woman's clan with that of a group of mammoths, Russell reveals the dense interconnections between primal people and the animals on which they rely. Her main character, a woman who choses to hunt for herself and her children, is developed as a parallel to a fiercely maternal mammoth "queen." With a fluidly poetic style and vivid characterizations, Russell brings the ancient Southwest alive. Patricia Monaghan

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 200 pages
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press; 1st edition (January 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826321313
• ISBN-13: 978-0826321312
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,245,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am pleased to be considered in the book world as a nature/science writer. At the same time, I have relied on Joseph Campbell's advice to follow my bliss. I write about what engages me, what I can learn from, what seems important. My topics include living in place, public lands grazing, archaeology, flowers, butterflies, hunger, and pantheism. One of the writing workshops I teach is called "A Fearless Heart: Research-Based Prose." Like the country/rock singer Steve Earle, in the lyrics of his song, I aspire as a writer to have a fearless heart, one that "falls in love a lot..."

I have lived in the American Southwest for most of my life, born at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert in 1954, raised in apartment buildings in Phoenix, Arizona, and settling in southern New Mexico in 1981. My collections of essays Songs of the Fluteplayer: Seasons of Life in the Southwest (Addison-Wesley, 1991; reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 2000) recounts my years as a back-to-the-lander in rural New Mexico where my husband and I had an oppressively large garden, too many goats, too much goat cheese, and two home births. My son and daughter are now in their early twenties, and my husband works as the city planner for the town of Silver City. I am a professor in the Humanities Department at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, where I teach writing at all levels, from composition for freshman to creative writing for graduate students. I also serve as part-time faculty in creative nonfiction for the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I enjoyed getting my own MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and my B.S. in Conservation and Natural Resources from the University of California at Berkeley.

My essays and short stories have been widely published and anthologized. My most recent book Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist was a New Mexico Book Award finalist and one of Booklists' top ten religious books of 2008. Hunger: An Unnatural History (Basic Books, 2005) was the result of a Rockefeller Fellowship at Bellagio, Italy, and An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect (Perseus Books, 2003) was a pick of independent booksellers in their Summer 2003 Book Sense 76. Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers has been translated into Korean, Chinese, Swedish, German, Spanish, and Portuguese--with other books also translated into Russian and Italian. The essays Songs of the Fluteplayer won the 1992 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and New Mexico Zia Award. Other awards are a Pushcart Prize, the Henry Joseph Jackson Award, and the Writers at Work Award. I write fiction as well as nonfiction. The Last Matriarch (University of New Mexico Press, 2000) is a novel about Paleolithic life in New Mexico some 11,000 years ago. The Humpbacked Fluteplayer (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1994) is a fantasy for ages 8-12. I have twice served as the PEN West judge for their annual award in best children's literature.

My teaching philosophy is simple: my goal is to increase a student's authority as a writer. I am here to encourage and support that authority. I can help students better revise their work. I can teach students how to talk about writing with other writers. I can help them feel more centered in who they are as writers and why they write. I can serve as an editor and mentor. I can model a writer's life. As well as teaching at WNMU and Antioch, for the last fifteen years I have been a visiting writer at universities and colleges across the country. I currently teach all online classes at my own university and am free to travel.

For me, writing is also about being active in the world of politics and social change. I have served eight years as an elected member of my local school board, and I founded the school-based food pantry program Alimento para el Nino, which sends home nutritious snacks over the weekend to over 200 hungry children in Grant County. I now work with environmental organizations such as the Upper Gila Watershed Association and the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Climate Protection, and with my local Quaker Meeting on issues of peace and social concern.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A beautiful, contemporary novel set in pre-historic times, March 27, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Matriarch (Hardcover)

Sharman Russell has returned to what she does best: write about the human condition in beautiful, poetic prose with humor, generosity, and a candor that makes you feel she was put on earth to express your thoughts for you. I wondered how she knew all my secrets as I read the story of an independent, though not stereotypical, woman in a tribe 12,000 years ago. She reveals a woman's perspective on her role in the group, her husbands, her children, her in-laws. Never saccharine-sweet, never a political diatribe; just clean, pure prose about a woman and her prehistoric neighborhood. I recommend this book especially to mothers, but I think men will appreciate it, too, for the light it sheds on "what women want". Whether you care about what happened to large land mammals or not, you will remember this book for its poetry and humanity.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reading for pre-teens, February 27, 2011

By 

Judy Sunderland - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Last Matriarch (Hardcover)

The Last Matriarch is a great read. Although technically fiction, the historical context is right on the mark and the dual plots are sympathetic and satisfying.

I did not read this until I was in my 50's, but I still enjoyed it so much I found the author (who is very accessible) and had her autograph it. I will read this with my grandchildren.