Children of the Earth

From the back cover of the Del Rey first edition: "Coconino had once served Mother Earth faithfully by destroying the starship Homeward Bound and keeping the secret of the Earth's rebirth from the interstellar colonists who had abandoned the homeworld centuries before. But the price was heavy. Torn from his own time by a freak accident and thrust 150 years into the future, he feared he had brought a great evil with him to the native People who revered him as a hero and a god. Worst of all, he no longer had the voice of Mother Earth to guide him. His friend and companion Phoenix was also left without guidance. She had never had the ability to hear the Earth as the People did, but with Coconino gone, the leadership of the fragile tribe fell to her. Meanwhile, light-years away on the planet Argo, the heirs of the lost expedition fought to learn the truth behind the Homeward Bound's mysterious fate and mount a rescue mission - a mission that would inevitably subject Earth once more to the violence and greed of man..."