No Enemy But Time (1982) 397 pages by Michael Bishop.

The story jumped back & forth in the life of John-John Monegal/Joshua Kampa, and for good reason. If it had been a straight chronological telling of his life, the reader would have long since given up on the story. Instead there are snippets from his childhood and on up to his time traveling. Interspersed with this are the chapters that Joshua spent doing the time traveling.

All his life John-John has spirit traveled to the beginnings of human evolution two million years ago. Now Dr. Kaprow has invented a way for a spirit traveler such as Joshua to visit those times.

Joshua goes back and immediately finds that his transcordian, the device that is to keep him in contact with the present day, doesn't work. Not only that but the appearance of the time machine scaffold which is supposed to come out three times a day isn't there at the prescribed times. Joshua takes this in stride and continues his mission of finding a hominid tribe and studying them. He ends up joining a band and living with them.

There's a blurb on the back cover that says "'Prehistoric detail is marvelous...crackingly funny.' - The Times" Certainly not the way I would describe it. Maybe some subtle humor, but nothing outlandish. I thought it was a straight up tale of how he interacted with this troop, faced dangers, foraged for food. One of the Minids died and they put him high in a tree so that a leopard would eat his flesh and not a hyena or vulture. That just seems like an ordinary detail.

After the first couple of chapters I was prepared to say this was bad, but once Joshua went into the past the story was really good.