Sara Gruen is the author of the bestseller Riding Lessons and Flying Changes. She lives with her husband, her three children, four cats, two dogs, and a horse in an environmental community north of Chicago.

Farrah Field: At the end of your latest novel, Water for Elephants, you reveal the inspiration behind the book: two books of photography entitled, The Photographs of Edward J. Kelty and Wild, Weird, and Wonderful: The American Circus as Seen by F.W. Glasier. Can you describe how the photographs inspired you to pursue a novel featuring the circus setting? In other words, did specific photographs of people and animals help to create those characters?

Sara Gruen: I was a day away from starting another novel when I opened the Sunday paper and saw a stunning panoramic photo of a circus’s freak show in the 1920s or 30s. That photograph inspired me to buy the other two books of photographs, and really set me on course to write this novel. However, I chose the photographs that appear in my book after I wrote it because I wanted them to have specific relevance to the surrounding chapters.

FF: You also say that you spent time with circus trainers to learn more about elephants and elephant body language. Would you please tell more about these experiences?

SG: It was actually a former elephant handler for the Kansas City Zoo, who happens to be married to a friend of mine. He was gored by one of his charges, a male African elephant named Casey, and took a tusk through the thigh, the ribcage, and upper arm. He was very lucky to survive. Even though this was twenty years before our visit, one of the female elephants at the zoo remembered him and when he called out to her she came as close as she could to the edge of the enclosure and purred. I had no idea elephants purred, and it was really wild—it sounded like an industrial vacuum with stuff clinking around in it, and obviously I had to work it into the book.

FF: While we’re on the topic of research, how true-to-life is your depiction of how circuses used to be managed? Do you feel circuses are still entrenched in the mistreatment of people and animals?

SG: I have no idea how current day circuses operate, but circuses in the 1920s and 1930s ran the spectrum from what were called “grift shows” to the “Sunday school shows”. The grift shows were the ones that made a fine art out of shortchanging their customers, sent pickpockets into the crowd, and had cooch tents in the back (The Benzini Brothers falls squarely in the grift show camp). The Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Combined Shows, on the other hand, was such a Sunday School outfit that they wouldn’t even tolerate the suggestion of impropriety. If two unattached employees were caught dating, the man was fired.

FF: What did your research reveal about the circus hierarchy, the class division among the laborers and the performers?

SG: It was a starkly defined hierarchy that permeated all aspects of circus life. At the top were the “bosses” and performers, and at the bottom were the working men (canvas men, roustabouts, etc.). The lowliest performer ranked above the highest working man. The cookhouse, where everyone ate, was separated down the middle by a curtain and the bosses and performers sat on one side at tables with linen and flowers, and the working men sat at bare wooden tables set end to end on the other.

FF: As I read your novel, I couldn’t help thinking about Geek Love by Katherine Dunn. If literature about circuses were its own genre, what books would you include?

SG: I don’t think I know of any others! If we included Vaudeville (mostly just because I loved this novel and want to mention it), Niagara Falls All Over Again by Elizabeth McCracken.

FF: As Jacob, the orphaned main character of the novel, recounts his grueling experience working as the veterinarian of a traveling circus, his memories are starkly juxtaposed with his present condition as a feeble, very old man in a retirement home. What led you to structure the novel this way? What drew you to the contrast of the backbreaking circus lifestyle with the diminished perspective of an elder Jacob?

SG: I never write from an outline, so when I sat down to begin writing, I was a little surprised to find an old man in my head. I think part of it was that I didn’t want to leave Jacob before the beginning of WWII because I would always wonder what had happened to him, and part of it was that I needed to know what became of Rosie. Also, there were obvious parallels between the younger Jacob’s caged charges and the older Jacob’s lack of control over his existence. In the nursing home, he gets fed and set out on display regularly, just as his former charges did.

FF: The novel opens with a horrific murder scene that takes place in the middle of the arc of the narrative. Why did you choose this particular part of the story with which to open?

SG: It’s the hook factor. I wanted something to make people want to keep reading. My greatest fear is of boring people, so I tend to start my books with the equivalent of a flaming car wreck.

FF: Jacob’s virginity is an excellent contrast to the seediness of circus work. How important was it to the development of his character to maintain his virginity and thus lose it in the way in which he does?

SG: Ah, but does he? The morning after his night of debauchery, he’s not at all clear on that. The first sexual experience that he does remember is a joyful, wonderful moment, and I wanted to contrast those two experiences because he’s so naïve when he initially finds himself on the circus that he spins out of control. By the time of his second experience, his true nature has regained control.

FF: A reviewer from Booklist describes the ending of Water for Elephants as, “a little too cheerful to be believed.” What is your reaction to this interpretation?

SG: I prefer to come away from a book feeling good, not depressed, and the only other conceivable ending was depressing in the extreme.

FF: The animals in all of your books hold as much import as the people. Rosie, the lemonade-stealing elephant, could be considered as much of a main character as Jacob or Marlena, his love interest. How do you develop animals into characters?

SG: I would argue that Rosie is very much a main character. In fact, she’s my favorite character. I develop animals into characters in the exact same way that I develop people into characters, because they’re as individual as people. With Rosie, I read up on elephants, talked with an elephant handler, and most importantly, observed elephants just being elephants with each other. After that, it was easy. Perhaps strangely, the characters that came most easily to me were Old Jacob, Rosie, and Queenie the dog.

FF: Furthermore, all of your books have close relationship with animals. Do you foresee yourself writing without them? If not, what other parts of the animal world would you like to explore in your writing?

SG: I think I fall slightly outside the normal range on the animal-loving scale, but I didn’t realize it until it started coming up in interviews. I’ve just always been an animal person—I surround myself with them, and I seek them out. When we’re on vacation and away from our own animal crew, I need regular animal fixes—when we go to Bonaire, I buy bags of apples and carrots and my husband and I drive around in search of wild donkeys. When we’re in Key West each year for the Literary Seminar, we make a pilgrimage to Hemingway House, buy a couple of bottles of catnip from their gift shop, and get all of Papa’s cats’ descendents hammered. When we leave, they’re lolling about on the lawn drunk as skunks getting their tummies scratched.

FF: On your website, you make it abundantly clear that proceeds from your books benefit animal charities. What prompted this action?

SG: All of my books contain themes of animals in distress, and these reflect real life. There are so many animals in need—homeless, abandoned, abused (my own home is filled with rescued animals). There was never any question that I would donate when and where I could. In fact, my first major purchase since learning that Water for Elephants is doing so well was a sizeable donation to The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee.

FF: You say that you live in an environmental community. What constitutes an environmental community and what effort does your family make to preserve and protect the environment?

SG: Our community has four-hundred-and-some families living on around 680 acres of land, right at the crossing of two commuter railroads so that it’s easy to get to downtown Chicago without setting foot in a car. Each of our lots is small, so we have lots of open space and we share an organic farm. Our homes are approximately 60% more energy-efficient than similar ones in the area, and we’re active in restoring the prairie and wetlands to which we’re adjacent. Our charter school emphasizes environmental stewardship. It is part of the curriculum, but we also live it on a daily basis by doing things like sending trash-free lunches—which is challenging for someone like me, whose plastic containers never seem to have lids that fit!

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