Water for Elephants

I finished this book this week. It is the tale of Jacob and his story on the Benzini Circus. He and Marlena, August's husband, fall in love and begin to see that August is a terrible man, who is bipolar. Jacob and Marlena run away from August after Marlena tries to throw August a celebration for a great show and August beats Marlena and Jacob. They formulate a plan to get off the circus and get out of the trouble with August. August becomes even more abusive and begins begging Marlena to come back, meanwhile the show must go on. The show continues, more frantic than ever, and once in a while flashes back to normal time when Jacob is 93 in a nursing home when a circus is coming by. In the end, August is killed by Marlena when a fire breaks out and she sees an opportunity to kill him and the leader of the circus, Uncle Al is killed by his workers. Marlena and Jacob take the animals and go to work on the Ringling Circus, after they confess their love for eachother. It ends with Jacob in his 90's leaving the nursing home on another circus, a smaller one, but he is back to his roots. Great book, read it in 3 days, really captivating.