Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

For everyone who wanted to run away and join the circus, Water for Elephants: A Novel may be the closest you'll ever get.  And, after reading it, you'll probably be thankful you didn't go, at least not in the 1930s. 

From the prologue to the final chapter, Gruen draws you into the world of the big top and midway, the trains, even the assisted living center where the 90-some year old protagonist, Jacob Jankowski, is placed by his children.  The characters are engaging, the kind you want to talk about as if you know them.  I'm so glad this is my bookclub's choice for this month.  I can't wait to talk about it next week.

The only disappointment I have with this book, is that early on, there's an incident about carrying water for elephants.  Jankowski, calls a fellow assisted living inmate a liar when he tells the table that he carried water for elephants.  I expected the reason he was so sure he was a liar to get fleshed out a little more in the story, although everything else was so engrossing, it's a real possibility that I missed it.