Leaving Time (with Bonus Novella Larger Than Life)

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When we got to the zoo, I raced along the paths until I found myself standing in front of Morganetta the elephant. On the night of July 16, 2004 tragedy strikes the sanctuary and Alice is taken by ambulance unconscious to Mercy United Hospital in Boone Heights. Picoult’s novel explores grief, memory, and motherhood through the unlikely lens of elephant behavior.

Despite their different backgrounds, Jenna, Serenity, and Virgil form a sort of unconventional family together. There are lots of things Jenna knows about her Mum, she knows that until she was three years old her Parents ran a sanctuary for elephants. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room – but eventually, you learn to live with it. Throughout the book there is a very clear message: elephants would be far, far better off if we humans kept a very great distance between us and them.

A few of the threads were unnecessary for me like the mentally challenged husband/father, and the whole Nevvie story. The Billy and Kani Fund supports elephant recovery in Africa and Thailand, and fosters education about and conservation of elephants. But ten years is a long time and trying to piece together information from that long ago is proving to be a challenge for everyone. When Jenna was three, her mother, Alice, was in an accident at an elephant sanctuary in New Hampshire, where Jenna's parents and another family worked.

acres of wooded hills, valleys, ponds, creeks and a lake are available to these elephants, retired from circuses and zoos.However, I managed to finish it with time to spare, and I think I'm still sitting here in a stunned state. Serenity needs a strong presence to be able to communicate with the dead, so they go to spot in the elephant sanctuary that had a special meaning for Alice.