Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen

I joined a book club and this is my first book. I've spent much of this weekend reading it and honestly don't want to put it down. It's a story about a man in his 90's looking back on his life - several years of which he spent working as a vet in a traveling circus - and his first love. Here is a better description:

Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen opens with a day of disaster at the circus and Jacob Jankowski admitting he kept a secret from that day for over 70 years. The novel then moves to the ninety-something year old Jacob in a nursing home. As the older Jacob fights to survive the indignities of old age he recounts the story of his life with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on earth.

Water for Elephants moves between the story of the traveling circus in 1930 to the story of the older Jacob’s fight to maintain sanity. While most of Water for Elephants is about the circus, the chapters about the older Jacob provide a depth to the novel and a poignancy to the story that makes the whole book richer and more real.