An Excerpt from Leaving Eden:

In the beginning, Adam was lonely.

That's how the clanswoman explained it, at any rate.

"Adam wants a helpmate," they said, winking.

"Oh, Adam," one of my older aunts, Rachel said with a dismissive wave. She was the liveliest, the jester. "He thinks he's the only man in the world. He always has."

Loud laughter burst from the group as it did after anything Rachel said. The great, bare limestone face of the mountain jutting before them, looking and acting like an animal's shoulder blade, scooped up the sound and flung it back on my ears. But then the women dropped down over a low rise and the dance of sound changed on the spring morning air. I couldn't hear who spoke next. I scurried after them, leaving most of the tender green shoots of a clump of yarrow untouched.

It was my father they were discussing after all. My father, Adam, who was lonely. Whom everyone declared needed "a helpmate".

Of course, this wasn't the first time my clanswomen had discussed my father in my hearing. Fifteen years of such talk had failed to bring them to any agreement, or they would have changed the subject long ago.

Fifteen years had also failed to answer my questions.

Why should Adam be lonely? I wanted to ask. Doesn't he have us, nearly as many in the clan as there are days in a cycle of the moon? Doesn't he have me, his own daughter?