The Year the Horses Came
Volume One of The Earthsong Trilogy evokes the moment in pre-history when marauding nomads brought horses, male gods, and war to a goddess-worshipping Europe that had known peace for thousands of years. Against this perilous backdrop, a passionate, dangerous love develops between Marrah, a gifted priestess, and Stavan, one of the invading warriors. Doom is on the way, and lovers from two cultures find themselves in the thick of horror. Stavan offers to try to deflect the Great Chief; Marrah and younger brother Arang will also journey--to warn other of the matristic peoples. The journey takes them through welcoming villages, forests, and religious places, but then disaster strikes, and Marrah and Arang are captured. There's an orgy of violence and cruelty, leading to a (literal) graveside escape. Mackey's message concerning patriarchal bloody swords vs. matriarchal plowshares is a rallying trumpet for the Bradley/Auel readership.
About Mary Mackey
MARY MACKEY is the author of thirteen novels and six collections of poetry. Related through her father's family to Mark Twain, she graduated from Harvard and received a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Michigan. In her twenties, she lived in the rain forests of Costa Rica. For a number of years, she has been traveling to Europe and Brazil and incorporating her experiences into her fiction and poetry. Mackey’s novels, which have sold over a million copies, have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List and been translated into twelve foreign languages including Japanese, Hebrew, Greek, Russian, and Finnish. At present, she lives in northern California with her husband Angus Wright, and is Professor Emeritus of English at California State University. To learn more about her you are invited to visit her webpage at: www.marymackey.com. She can also be found on Facebook.
