The Dawning tells an age-old story of deadly struggle, the heart-rending tale of young love-its aspirations, pain, disappointments and eventual triumph. Ejil and Lada, son and daughter of a Cro-Magnon tribe (on the verge of adulthood) have begun to explore their maturing feelings when an encounter with a clan of Neanderthal hunters tears their Ice Age world apart. Lada is lost and Ejil finds himself embarked on a desperate odyssey to find the mother tribe. The Neanderthals, a pale skinned people, occupied Ice Age Europe for three hundred thousand years. Dark-skinned Cro-Magnons, our direct ancestors, appeared forty-five thousand years ago. Five thousand years later, the Neanderthals had disappeared. What happened when our two ancestral peoples came face to face on the ice bound plains of prehistory? Travel back 33,000 years into our deep past. Set against the backdrop of the fabulous painted caves of Southern France, follow the gripping tale of two young lovers and the sweeping narrative of ancient cultures met in bloody conflict.