Sara Gruen - Water for Elephants

Praise for WATER FOR ELEPHANTS

Lively with historical detail and unexpected turns.... Water for Elephants is a rich surprise, a delightful gem springing from a fascinating footnote to history that absolutely deserved to be mined.

The Denver Post

So compelling, so detailed and vivid, that I couldnt bear to be torn away from it for a single minute.

Chicago Tribune

Gruen unearths a lost world with her rich and surprising portrayal of life in a traveling circus in the 30s. An emotional tale that will please history buffsand others.

People

[An] arresting new novel.... With a showmans expert timing, [Gruen] saves a terrific revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale.... Water for Elephants resembles stealth hits like The Giants House, by Elizabeth McCracken, or The Lovely Bones, by Alice Sebold, books that combine outrageously whimsical premises with crowd-pleasing romanticism.

The New York Times Book Review

Sara Gruen has written a rare book that is a great story, well written and bearing one of the happiest endings you will ever read.

Rona Brinlee, NPRs Morning Edition

[This] sprightly tale has a ringmasters crowd-pleasing pace.

Entertainment Weekly

Gritty, sensual and charged with dark secrets involving love, murder and a majestic, mute heroine (Rosie the Elephant).

Parade

Youll get lost in the tatty glamour of Gruens meticulously researched world, from spangled equestrian pageantry and the sleazy side show to an ill-fated night at a Chicago speak-easy.

The Washington Post

[A] riveting story.... Gruen is an old-fashioned storyteller, who, in keeping with John Updikes blueprint for fiction, can keep an organized mass of images and characters.

The Toronto Globe and Mail

Sara Gruen offers love, drama and thrills under the big top. Only the most hardened of audience members will be able to resist.

The Tampa Tribune

A fascinating setting and a richly anecdotal story that is enjoyable right up to the final, inevitable revelation.

The Onion

Gruen sets her story among the freaks and geeks and captive animals of a traveling circus during the Great Depression. Its a good move.... She ratchets up the tension bit by tiny bit, luring us into the weird world of the roustabout and the candy butcher, the fat lady and the cooch coach.

Veronique De Turenne, NPRs Day to Day

Gruen performs a double trick in her novel: She gives an engrossing picture of circus life as well as a taste of what its like to grow old.

Minneapolis Star Tribune

A beautiful book.

John Searles, CBSs The Early Show

A piercing look at Depression-era circus life, where violence, laughter managed to coexist.... Sara Gruens Water for Elephants captures the sounds, smells and sights of the circus.... Delicious.

The Charlotte Observer

Novelist Sara Gruen sweeps her readers off their feet in the opening pages of Water For Elephantsand doesnt let go until she deposits them at the end of her fantastic tale of passion, madness and fancy.... The last notes of Water for Elephants linger long after the book ends. The alternating glamour and squalor of the circus world Gruen expertly conjures may truly be one of the greatest shows.

The Grand Rapids Press

You need this elephant in your life.... Water for Elephants is a keeper.

Baton Rouge Journal

Jacobs search for lost time is vivid and atmospheric, his story told with passion and an eye for the curious and entertaining detail.

Bookmarks magazine

A love letter to a colorful but terrifying past and an exciting story from cover to cover.... This is sheer fun.

Richmond Times-Dispatch

Endlessly surprising and superior in its attention to detail, the novel is the unknown adventure saga we cant believe weve never heard.

The Kansas City Star

Vivid, riveting, and surprisingly poignant.

Pages

A rich, rolling epic of a story. Its like those circus posters of days gone by: Youll laugh, youll cry, you wont believe your eyes. Step forward ladies and gentlemen. And indeed you should.

Independent Weekly

Water for Elephants vividly and concisely brings this lost world to life.

Columbus Dispatch

Old-fashioned and endearing, this is an enjoyable, fast-paced story.

Library Journal

Lovely and mesmerizing.

Kirkus Reviews

[A] page-turner.... Gruen skillfully humanizes midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.

Publishers Weekly

Gorgeous, brilliant, and superbly plotted, Water for Elephants swept me into the world of the circus during the Depression, and it did not let me go until the very end. I dont think it has let me go, even now. Sara Gruen has a voice to rival John Irvings, and I am hopelessly, unabashedly in love with this book. Read it.

Joshilyn Jackson, author of Gods in Alabama

So much more than a tale about a circus, Water for Elephants is a compelling journey not only under the big top, but into the protagonists heart. Sara Gruen uses her talent as a writer to bring that world alive for the reader: I could smell it, taste it, feel every word of it. This is a fiction readers dream come true.

Jeanne Ray, author of Julie and Romeo Get Lucky

The circus, the Great Depression, a complex elephant, equally complex love, the mists and twists of memory articulated in the utterly winning voice of a very old man whos seen it all: these are the irresistible elements of Water for Elephants. Sara Gruen has written an utterly transporting novel richly full of the stuff of life.

Robert Olen Butler, author of From Where You Dream

An entirely original, captivating story of finding love in a down-at-the-heels traveling circus in the Great Depression. Sara Gruen writes with great tenderness and breathtaking drama, which makes the novel impossible to put down.

Stephanie Cowell, author of Marrying Mozart

In this thrilling, romantic story set in a traveling circus in the 1930s, Sara Gruen has a big tops worth of vivid characters and an exhilarating narrative that kept me up all night. From the perseverance of a terrier named Queenie to the charm of Rosie the elephant, this masterpiece of storytelling is a book about what animals can teach people about love.

Susan Cheever, author of My Name Is Bill

A NOVEL

SARA GRUEN

Published by
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Post Office Box 2225
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of
WORKMAN PUBLISHING
225 Varick Street
New York, New York 10014

2006 by Sara Gruen. All rights reserved.
First paperback edition, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, April 2007.
Originally published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in 2006.
Printed in the United States of America.
Design by Jacky Woolsey.

For permission to reprint photographs, grateful acknowledgment is made to the following: pages xii, 48, 90, 112, 142, 160, 220, 260, 290, and 312 courtesy of the Collection of the Ringling Circus Museum, Sarasota, Florida; pages 30, 178, and 196 courtesy of the Pfening Archives, Columbus, Ohio; page 70 courtesy of Ken Harck Archives; pages 128 and 238 courtesy of Timothy Tegge, Tegge Circus Archives, Baraboo, Wisconsin; page 14 courtesy of Barbara Fox McKellar.