Every once in a while I will come across a novel that stands head and shoulders above the rest, and Sara Gruen's "Water for Elephants" is just such a book. I am a little late in celebrating it, since my sisters and my wife have been advising me to read this novel for some time now, but, hopefully, I am not too late to sing its praises to encourage those of you who haven't yet read it to consider doing so. As a further inducement, I might also mention that it has been made into a movie coming out on April 22nd starring Reese Witherspoon as Marlena.

One of the great joys of reading is to discover a novel by a previously unknown author and being swept into their world by the lyrical and descriptive prose and a story which soars with imagination. Sara Gruen does this exceptionally well in "Water for Elephants," a sprawling saga about a traveling circus during the Great Depression. This is the story of Jacob Jankowski, currently a dissatisfied and cranky ninety-three year old resident at a nursing home waiting for one of his adult children to make their weekly visit and escort him to a small circus setting up just outside in the nursing home parking lot. 

Although he will keep this secret to himself for personal reasons, he knows the circus life well. He reflects back to his youth during the Great Depression when he lucked into a job as the veterinarian for a low rent traveling circus filled with freaks and carnival barkers out to hustle the country "rubes" out of their few paltry dollars as they traveled by rail around the country. 

I love this novel and I say this as someone who doesn't even like circuses or carnivals. I find most of them to be seedy, disreputable joints filled with thieves, pickpockets and heaven only knows what else. I don't even like the atmosphere of these places. Furthermore, I hate to see animals in cages, and I hate even more to see them trained and forced to go through some silly act in order to please the humans in the stands. This is not my idea of entertainment. If I want to see elephants, I will watch them in the wild on a nature channel, thank you very much. 

But these shows do exist, and they have their appeal to many. Ms. Gruen has done an extraordinary job researching circus archives all over the country in her brilliant effort to capture not only the feel of these shows, but also to relate to us numerous widely disparate anecdotes, all of them true, which she has found in her research and incorporated into this story.

The story begins with Jacob reflecting back to his days at Cornell just before he is to take his final exams to graduate with a future career as a caring veterinarian like his beloved father beckoning. However, his dream dies stillborn when his parents are tragically killed in a car accident, and Jacob has to withdraw from Cornell when he finds out that his parents had mortgaged everything to send him to school and now he is penniless. 

With no future, no money, and little hope, he jumps a train as a hobo, only to find out that it is a circus train for what is called the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. When he is discovered, the circus manager is initially suspicious of this rather clean cut hobo, but he quickly changes his mind after he finds out that Jacob had gone to Cornell to become a vet. Jacob then fortuitously falls into employment as the veterinarian for what turns out to be a down-at-its-heels traveling circus which constantly teeters on the edge of insolvency. 

Jacob acquires status as the circus veterinarian which allows him to eat with the performers and managers. Uncle Al, the owner of the circus, is impressed with the way he administers to Silver Star, a valuable horse and a part of the team used by Marlena in her popular act. His value increases even more when Uncle Al scoops up an elephant from another circus which had gone belly up. Although Rosie, the "bull," appears to be useless and not trainable, Jacob discovers the secret that she has been trained to respond only to commands in Polish and he is Polish.

Marlena is impressed as well, for she is not used to seeing others treat animals with such kindness like Jacob. Unfortunately for his job security, Jacob falls in love with Marlena from the moment he lays eyes upon her, which is not a good idea as Marlena is married to his boss, August, a man known for his ferocious temper, and one of the major unwritten rules of this circus is never even to eye her appreciatively, for men have been fired for less. 

So near to the heavenly Marlena and yet so far, for Jacob must keep his thoughts to himself. As time goes on, the heaven of his job caring for the circus animals mixes uncomfortably with the occasionally brutal hell of the realities of a circus life on the cheap where workers and animals are both discarded, or worse, like excess baggage if they have outlived their usefulness.   

Sara Gruen's novels to date are "Riding Lessons" (2004), "Flying Changes" (2005), and "Water for Elephants" (2006), with many of the characters and incidents in this novel based on real people and true stories gleaned from her extensive research into the world of traveling circuses of the 1930s. She is a Canadian-born dual citizen (Canadian and American) who moved to the States in 1999 for a technical writing job. When she was laid off two years later, she decided to take a gamble on writing fiction full-time. Fortunately, the gamble paid off. Ms. Gruen is an animal lover who now lives with her husband, three children, five cats, two goats, a dog, and a horse in Asheville, North Carolina. 2006, Algonquin Books, 350 pages.