He assigned her readings and she used his notes like a “creative constraint”.įor her modern story, she spoke with women in science about the challenges of balancing their families with field work.

Her husband is usually her first reader and felt that this was the best book she had ever written but asked her to consider whether she meant the neanderthals to speak like english was their second language? For her third draft she worked with a scientist who helped her find all the areas that her “science was soft”. Interestingly she has included bears in all 3 of her novels including: The Line Painter, The Bear (best seller) and The Last Neanderthal. She started to write an interesting story, underpinned by research and science.Ĭameron used her love of the outdoors and canoeing in Northern Ontario as inspiration for the setting and her experience as an Outward Bound instructor to channel the theme of survival. In fact, she discovered that neanderthals and humans were similar and co-evolved. This led her to research beyond the colonial narrative of human evolution which deigned neanderthals as primitive and humans as evolved. With all the advertisements for DNA testing, Cameron discovered that she had 2.5% neanderthal DNA. Readers can ponder the challenges of survival and gain a new respect for neanderthals.

It helps to reconsider history and understand new discoveries following the sequencing of neanderthal DNA in 2010. The Last Neanderthal was not only an entertaining story but encourages a reader to reconsider the experiences of living 40,000 years ago.

Beyond the Screen by A.J. Cameron