Mammoth by Stephen Baxter
Starting with the story of SilverHair, the last of the few remaining mammoths that have survived in a Siberian evolutionary backwater the MAMMOTH trilogy is the story of the mammoths of history and legend. It is their story built on their own myths and traditions. Conscious and intelligent, the mammoths of this trilogy have, within the limits of their nature, their own culture and oral mythology, even a creation myth, which they will use to tell their story, understand their world and try to cope with the encroachments of mankind. In Book One Silverhair must lead the last surviving family of mammoths to safety when a party of Russian sailors is shipwrecked on the Siberian island the mammths have hidden on through the millennia. The hope for the future lies in her skill and wit and with the calf she is carrying.