Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants is a 2006 historical romance novel by the Canadian-American author Sara Gruen, set in a twentieth-century circus. Gruen wrote the book during National Novel Writing Month. A film adaptation was released in 2011, and a stage musical began presentations in 2023 and opened on Broadway in the spring of 2024.

The story is told through the memories of Jacob Jankowski, a man in a nursing home who cannot remember whether he is ninety or ninety-three. His days there are regimented and uneventful, and the novel alternates the present-day nursing home with his account of the travelling circus, which is how it frames the difference between remembered adventure and the quiet of old age.

The circus material is specific rather than romantic. Jacob is a veterinary student who did not finish his degree and is placed in charge of the animals, and the show he joins is described as third-rate and struggling. The relationships that matter are with Marlena, the equestrian star married to the animal trainer August, and the elephant Rosie. The show he joins is the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, and its finances are bad enough that the animals and the performers are both treated as assets.