A story of magic and apocalypse set in the American Southwest of the sixteenth century, Teresa of the New World weaves together history and myth, real-life conquistadors and shape-shifting jaguars, the devastation of plague and the promise of home.

In the 23rd century, humans live in utopia, hunting and gathering in tribal bands, reunited with old (cloned) friends like the mammoth, connected by solar-powered laptops, buoyed by the belief in a panpsychic universe in which consciousness pervades matter. A 150 years after the supervirus that killed off most of humanity, our return to a Paleoterrific lifestyle seems to our last, greatest achievement. But in this new Garden of Eden, one man and one woman—as well as a smarter-than-average dire-wolf--are faced with a decision that could literally transform the planet. Again. Will we repeat the cycle of curiosity and hubris? Or is our destiny even stranger than that?

Over eleven thousand years ago the plains of the great Southwest were covered with sweet long-season grass. Herds of camels, bison, mammoths lived with predators like dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, and the hunter gatherers we now call the Clovis people. This story of Willow, Jak, Etol, and their clan takes place in a land that we unconsciously recognize, and shows us people whose needs, hopes, and fears are our own. They live in a world where communication with animals, plants, and even stones is not only possible but necessary. Willow's life path echoes that of Half Ear and Red Fur, the matriarchs of the woolly mammoth herd, and by joining their stories, Russell explores an archaeological puzzle: the extinction of nearly eighty percent of large land mammals at the end of the Pleistocene. The meaning of being human lies at the heart of the puzzle. Russell's imaginative reconstruction of the world of Willow and her clan illumines the tribal self--the basket maker, the mammoth hunter, the healer, the shaman--that still lives in each of us.

When May touches the crude cave drawing of a fluteplayer, she and Evan are transported to an alternate reality, where they become pawns in a tense intertribal battle, and finding the humpbacked fluteplayer again is their only hope for escape.