When Women Held the Fire
Seven Prehistoric Stories of Healing and Survival in the Stone Age
She saved a child from deadly danger. They exiled her for it.
Lera is a healer in a Stone Age valley where a dying glacier has poisoned the rivers. When she defies the village elders to expose what’s killing their children, they turn on her — it’s easier to blame one woman than face the vast changes reshaping their world. The man she loves doesn’t follow. So Lera sacrifices everything — the hearth she built, the belonging she earned, the only life she’s ever known — and walks out into the cold rather than stay silent as children die.
She is only the first in a line of seven.
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One Valley. Seven Healers. Four Thousand Years.
This epic saga spans four thousand years in prehistoric Central Europe (6000 BCE–2300 BCE). Across ages of upheaval, Lera’s descendants carry on her legacy. Each healer inherits her courage, her hard-won remedies, and her unyielding spirit. Each faces a crisis unlike anything her ancestors could have imagined.
The Seven Stories
Story 1: The Glacier’s Breath (6000 BCE) — A healer discovers the rivers are poisoned by glacial melt. When she speaks the truth, her people exile her. The lineage begins with a woman walking alone into the unknown.
Story 2: The Smoke of the First Furnace (5400 BCE) — A healer’s lover discovers copper smelting — and nearly kills himself in the process. She must choose between the man she loves and the safety of her people.
Story 3: The Lake of Shadows (4500 BCE) — In a lakeside village, a healer invents a way to record knowledge on clay — and threatens everything the elders believe about tradition and memory.
Story 4: Ash-Mother of the Mountain (3800 BCE) — A distant volcano buries the valley in ash. A healer must lead her people through darkness, starvation, and the invaders who arrive in the chaos.
Story 5: The Fever of the Fields (3600 BCE) — Farming has transformed the valley — but stored grain breeds a deadly mold. A healer traces the fever to the food itself, and the man she loves refuses to believe her.
Story 6: The River of Strangers (3300 BCE) — At a great trade fair, a child dies from drinking poisoned water. The healer discovers that beautiful new copper cups are leaching poison into wine — but the merchant king’s shaman calls her a witch.
Story 7: The Stone Circle Sacrifice (2600 BCE) — At the construction of a great stone monument, a healer’s apprentice is trapped beneath forty tons of fallen stone. To save him, she must command exhausted men to do the impossible — knowing it may kill some of them.
You’ll Love This If You Love
- Prehistoric fiction grounded in real archaeology, where the drama comes from the land, not from magic
- Strong women across forty centuries who heal, defy, and refuse to be silenced
- A sweeping saga from retreating glaciers to the dawn of civilization
- Women whose desires, passions, and heartbreak are as real as their remedies
- Herbalism, healing, and raw survival in a world that hasn’t been tamed yet
If you’ve ever wished for more stories of the women who held their communities together — women who knew how to stop bleeding with a root, keep insects away with smoke, and ease a difficult birth with the right herb — this book will ignite your imagination.
This isn’t the Stone Age behind glass. You’re at the healer’s side, where every decision matters and every season brings a new threat.