Publisher's Weekly
Kori, a member of a Paleolithic hunter-gatherer people on the Siberian savanna, captures a woman from a neighboring tribe and finds himself at odds with her radically different language and customs. ``Light years separate Thomas's intelligent, literate fiction from most other novels set in prehistoric times,'' said PW .

Library Journal
The Animal Wife , which is set in Siberia 20,000 years ago, is a companion novel to Thomas's earlier Reindeer Moon (LJ 1/87). It depicts the life of the hunter-gatherer tribes of those plains through the story of Kori, a young male of the tribe. While out hunting, Kori captures a woman from another tribe whom he names Muskrat. Their evolving relationship and the interactions among the family tribe members as they move from their summer grounds to their winter grounds in the constant search for food form the heart of the novel. Thomas is an anthropologist who has used her experiences with the Kalahari bushmen as background. However, this works best as a work of fiction and not an anthropological study; there is much interest and humor in the male-female conflicts. This will be heavily promoted and, while not as steamy, is likely to appeal to Clan of the Cave Bear fans. --Janet Boyarin Blundell, Brookdale Community Coll., Lincroft, N.J.