Meet Emily Jones, author of new classic, a coming-of-age in prehistory
September 21, 2025
Elisabeth Sherwin -- ensherwin@gmail dot com
Columnist
Emily Jones has taken her considerable academic expertise (she is a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico), her love of reading and writing, her love of animals and the outdoors, her love of history and prehistory, and created a novel that will delight a wide range of readers.
It’s billed as a “young adult” book, but it will delight all ages.
"I didn't write it with that kind of distinction (young adult vs. adult) in mind--I just wrote the story that came to me. When the time came to send it out, I quickly learned that from the publishing industry's perspective, the fact that 'Nahia' has coming-of-age themes means young adult is where it gets placed."
Yes, it has some strong messages for young women – be independent, find your own path, embrace responsibility, thrill to the natural world, believe in yourself. Good messages for everyone, right?
You could say Jones has lived by these guidelines, too.
“I grew up on the East Coast,” she wrote in an email. “I lived in Philadelphia as a kid and later in southern New England. I was a voracious reader as a child, especially of fiction set in the past …and especially anything set in time periods for which there isn't much of a historical record.”
Books by Scott O'Dell (“Island of the Blue Dolphin”) Mary Stewart's Merlin trilogy, and “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel were all big favorites.
Jones says she still loves books in this genre, though she also reads a lot of speculative fiction of other kinds including fantasy, science fiction, and alternate history.
“In retrospect I can see this as an early interest in archaeology, but I wasn't someone who grew up wanting to be an archaeologist. I didn't make the connection between my interest in the deep past and archaeology until I was an undergraduate at Vassar College intending to be an English and Drama major and stumbled into an archaeology class by purest chance.
"I was lucky enough to find a wonderful mentor, Dr. Anne Pike-Tay, who got me started on my interest in European prehistory. My career as an archaeologist developed from there.”
Jones earned her Master's in 2001 and Ph.D in 2004 from University of Washington in Seattle.
She taught at Diné College (a tribal college on the Navajo Nation) and at Utah State University before moving to UNM in 2011.
“Nahia” is about a teen-ager who lives with a group of semi-nomadic hunter-gatherers on the seacoast. Their lives are endangered by the arrival of an aggressive tribe of agriculturalists or farmers who tame the land and build villages. When Nahia warns her people of the threat facing their way of life, she is exiled. She is forced to become the apprentice to the local shaman. Slowly, Nahia discovers her own power.
Jones says moving from academic writing to young adult fiction has been an interesting journey, but in some ways was a return to her roots.
“Most people who knew me in my pre-archaeology days, if asked what I was likely to wind up doing as an adult, would have said ‘writer.’ I was not only always reading, but I was also always writing, mostly fiction, at that age.”
Her return to fiction writing was challenging.
“Writing a novel is very different from writing scientific articles, but I have come to see how much it is an integration of many strands of what I do. Writing ‘Nahia’ allowed me to bring together the fiction I love and my work in European prehistory. I also have to say … writing fiction about the past this way was just incredibly fun. I don't get to let my imagination run quite so wild in my scientific work.
“It was freeing to approach the past from this very different direction,” she added.
I asked Jones how living on the Navajo Nation influenced "Nahia."
"This is a really interesting question, and not an easy one for me to answer. I can't point to any one specific part of 'Nahia' that is based on my experience there or at the Pueblo of Zuni--I lived at Zuni for about a year before going to graduate school. I was working for the Zuni tribal archaeology program at the time.
"But living among Indigenous people and on tribal land for five-plus years, while working for tribally run organizations, has absolutely shaped my worldview and pretty much everything I do. To write 'Nahia' I had to find an Indigenous European worldview --one of a people that no longer exist--and I also had to think about the experience of interacting with colonizers.
"(But) the Sea People's worldview, and their experience, is their own. There's nothing specific that's drawn from Navajo/Diné or Zuni or any other living people. But my Indigenous neighbors, colleagues, friends, and above all my students--at Zuni, on the Navajo Nation/at Diné College, and also here in Albuquerque and at UNM, where there is a large Native population--have taught me a great deal. Without all they've given me, I don't think I could have written the Sea People," she said.
How long did it take Jones to write "Nadia"?
"The short version is, about six months to write the first draft; another six to do a revision so major that it was essentially a re-write; and then another very intense month to do another round of revisions.
"But there was a pause in there. After the first rewrite, it got an agent, went on the market, and didn't sell, and I figured that was that (this was about 10 years ago). I put it in a drawer for many years. Then, back in 2022, I was cleaning out my drawers and found an old hard copy. I was surprised by how much I liked it! Holiday House was open to unagented submissions, and I figured, why not send it in. So I did, not expecting to hear anything back. I had completely forgotten about it by March of 2023, when I got an email from my now-editor, Mora Couch."
Jones also included “A Few Notes on Nahia’s World” at the end of the book that readers will likely find fascinating and helpful. In her nonfiction notes, Jones describes some of the archaeological data used to underpin her fictional story.
“The transition from foraging societies to agricultural ones was undeniably one of the most significant events in human history,” she wrote. “Real people lived through this change, and saw their worlds altered beyond recognition as a result.”
Jones brilliantly captures this change and its human effects in “Nahia.”
And what about a sequel?
"We'll see."
-- Reach Elisabeth Sherwin at ensherwin@gmail.com
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