Author, Sara Gruen, lingers in the tents long after the gaping crowd has dispersed in Water for Elephants, the lovely, comic, resounding story of a traveling train circus. When Jacob Jankowski's parents die in a car accident, he cannot focus on his final exams at Cornell, where he is studying to become a veterinarian.

Leaving school behind, Jacob wanders deep into the woods, and when a passing train approaches, he decides to climb aboard. The train itself, and the glittery, often grotesque chaos of the people who create the circus, are not at all what Jacob expects to find inside the cars, but he swiftly becomes a useful member of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. Though he never finished his exams, he serves as veterinarian for the circus menagerie, quelling the fears of the formidable Uncle Al, who hires him. Uncle Al is man who breaks brandy snifters when he's upset, a man whose circus is far less renowned than others. "Uncle Al is a buzzard, a vulture, an eater of carrion [...] When the Crash came, larger circuses started going down and Uncle Al could hardly believe his luck [...] He grew fat off their carcasses." What Uncle Al creates is a fascinating, dark, and often cruel place. Gruen does not allow the reader to use popular images of the circus to contextualize her story; instead, she delves into the circus hierarchy. The "working men" sleep in bunk cars, the "performers" in their "staterooms"; even the cookhouse dining rooms are divided, so that the prestigious performers eat on tablecloths, gazing at flowers, while the true laborers eat without a hint of decor. Ultimately, the circus becomes far more interesting once the audience has drifted away.

Although the story of Jacob's travels with the circus is rich enough to stand alone, Gruen introduces Jacob, not in the moment he abandons Cornell, but in an assisted living facility, where the taste of fresh fruit is one of his primary fantasies. "I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other," he says. The story is beautifully navigated between Jacob in his youth – fresh, bold, intelligent, and willing to jump on a train without knowing its direction - and the same man, bedridden and spiteful of his own condition. As a circus sets up just beyond the windows of Jacob's nursing home, the opportunity for two stories also begins to rise. Although he is no longer physically able to jump trains, stop fistfights, or dance outside a tent with the incandescent Marlena, Jacob draws out stories from his circus days with ease. His humor remains consistent throughout; as he muses about his age, he wonders, "What's the difference between three weeks or three years or even three decades of mushy peas [and] tapioca...?" Perhaps Gruen's greatest accomplishment, beyond exploring the artificiality of the circus, is the seamlessness of Jacob's tone, without compromising the realities of age.