Water for Elephants

by Sara Gruen · 2006

An elderly Jacob Jankowski recalls his youth as a veterinary student who joins the Benzini Brothers traveling circus during the Great Depression, working the menagerie under the volatile boss August, falling for August's wife Marlena, and caring for the elephant Rosie amid the show's harsh, itinerant world.

Books mentioned in Water for Elephants (1)

• Othello by William Shakespeare: “I'm lounging on my bedroll reading Othello and Walter is on his cot reading Wordsworth.”