My mother bundled me back to the car for the four hour drive home, although we had only been at the zoo for ten minutes. But Tina died, and when she did, Sissy stayed with her – and then remained by her grave for a few days.

If I hadn't been in work by the time I finished the last few pages, I probably would have started crying. The Sanctuary was where Jenna had been born, where her mother and father Thomas Metcalf worked together, caring for their beloved elephants, and learning of the close familial bond which elephant families share. The cast of characters was quite the motley crew of misfits, but I grew to love them all individually. She is on her own and ends up enlisting help from two dubious characters; Serenity who was once a celebrity psychic with the ability to talk to spirits but whose skills are rusty now as her two spirit guides seem to have have forsaken her, and Virgil Stanhope, an ex-cop turned private investigator who was on her mother’s case but missed some of the clues and who is now a miserable alcoholic on account of the botched investigation. It is a wonderful story of love and respect, grief and loss plus the love between a mother and her child, be it elephant or human; the telling is shared between Jenna, Alice, Serenity and Virgil.Alice and Maura, Metcalf’s favorite elephant at the sanctuary and the one elephant that seemed to form a very strong, almost personal bond with Alice, share a tenacious and unbreakable love for their daughters even when thousands of miles separate them from physical touch and companionship.

I think my jaw hit the ground as I wasn't expecting it, and then become emotional relating the mother/daughter relationship to the elephants and their calves. I have no idea if I would reread this book ever again in my life but I am happy that I finally found the time to read another book from Jodi Picoult. It’s true that the bond between a mother and her child is unbreakable and I can attest to that wholeheartedly. This very moving and poignant story is full of mystery and intrigue, but the twist at the end of the book blew me away!

Ten years ago, Alice Metcalf vanished after a car accident, leaving her daughter Jenna to grow up grappling with the mystery of her disappearance. You probably know a lot about elephants already – like the fact that they are the largest land mammals, 7-10K pounds. As Jenna, Serenity and Virgil dug deeply into the past, trying to find information which had been missed by the police all those years ago, tantalising snippets began to emerge. I literally had to spend the first few minutes before starting my shift at work, sitting in a stunned silence after finishing this book.

Just in case there are any film producers who read this (you never know), I think this book would make an excellent movie. I'm a huge fan of Jodi Picoult, I was lucky enough to receive a proof copy to review, and it was excellent! I'd previously read the short story, Larger Than Life , that is linked to this, so it was a nice little introduction into the characters. It’s got everything you’d expect from Picoult: the impeccable pacing, the efficient prose, the expertly rendered characters, the brushstrokes of deep emotional brilliance, the carefully presented moral dilemmas. Jenna's father and Alice's husband, Thomas Metcalf, develops manic depression and is taken to a mental institution.

Maybe I would have tried to memorize the smell of bug spray on my mother’s skin, or the way she absent-mindedly braided my hair, tying it off on the end with a stalk of green grass. To avoid spoilers, I will not elaborate further on this theme but the book does raise interesting questions about the concept of time. The Billy and Kani Fund supports elephant recovery in Africa and Thailand, and fosters education about and conservation of elephants.

Three-year-old Jenna is led out to the sanctuary grounds by her babysitter Nevvie, who smashes Jenna over the head with a rock in revenge for her daughter's death.Also interspersed with the story are extensive passages about elephants, who are highly intelligent animals with close family ties. We are first introduced to the three female narrators, each in her own voice: 13 year old Jenna; her mother Alice, who ten years ago checked herself out of a hospital never to be seen again; and the down-on-her-luck psychic, Serenity, who Jenna hires to help find Alice. It’s even possible that the strong winds in Africa could blow a scattering of bones into a concentrated pile. We began our relationship when I read Salem Falls and was happy with the characterization and the twisty plot. Alice was a scientist who studied elephants, first in Botswana, Africa then at the New England Elephant Sanctuary in the US, where both African and Asian captive elephants were able to live out the remainder of their lives in a natural habitat, free from the chains of bondage.