Water for Elephants Review

I must admit that I am a book snob in some respects.  When my sister gave me a book about a child in 19th century China, I was sure that I'd hate it.  (but I wound up loving it!)  When my mother gave me a book about a Depression-era traveling circus, again, I figured that I wouldn't like it.  WRONG. WRONG.  WRONG.  Water for Elephants is one of the best books that I've read in the past year and probably even longer than that.

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen follows Jacob Janowski back and forth from the present as a 90-something year old nursing home resident and a twenty-something year old young man who unexpectedly winds up joining the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth Circus.  Because young Jacob was an almost-graduate from the Cornell Veterinary School, he quickly secures a job caring for the liberty horses, lions, primates, giraffes, hippos, and eventually even an elephant named Rosie.  The politics involved in a shady train circus are extremely complicated and Jacob tries to do his best to fit in, keep his job, and care for the animals as best he can. 

This book starts out basically with the start of the conclusion.  All hell breaks loose and all of the employees are alerted to that fact when the band starts playing the "disaster march". Jacob witnesses a murder and keeps the secret for his entire 90-something years.  I must admit that things certainly didn't wind up the way that I expected them to which was a brilliant move by the author.  The rest of the book takes the reader from Jacob's jump onto the train to the fallout from the murder scene.

I absolutely loved reading Water for Elephants and have already passed it on to my sister to read.  In fact, I plan to recommend this book to one of my coworkers who I know enjoys reading.  This is a great book and the only disappointment for me was when I hit the end.  Highly recommended!