AUTHOR’S NOTE
Although this book is fiction, the plight of elephants worldwide is, sadly, not. Poaching for the commercial ivory trade has been increasing, due to widespread poverty in Africa and the growing market for ivory in Asia. There are documented cases in Kenya, Cameroon, and Zimbabwe; in the Central African Republic; in Botswana and Tanzania; and in the Sudan. There’s a rumor that Joseph Kony funded his Ugandan resistance army with the illegal sale of ivory poached from the Democratic Republic of Congo. Most illegal shipments are sent across badly regulated borders to ports in Kenya and Nigeria, and shipped to Asian countries like Taiwan and Thailand and China. Although Chinese officials say that they have banned the trade of ivory products, Hong Kong authorities recently seized two shipments of illegal ivory from Tanzania whose value totaled more than $2 million. Not long before this writing, forty-one elephants were killed in Zimbabwe by poisoning their water hole with cyanide, netting $120,000 worth of ivory.
You can tell that an elephant society is being poached when the population dynamic becomes skewed. At the age of fifty, the tusk of a male elephant will weigh more than seven times that of a female, so males are always the first targets. Then poachers come for the females. The matriarch is the largest, often with the heaviest tusks—and when matriarchs are killed, they are not the only casualties. You have to figure in the number of calves that are left behind. Joyce Poole and Iain Douglas-Hamilton are among the experts who have worked with elephants in the wild and who have dedicated themselves to stopping poaching and spreading awareness of the effects of the illegal ivory trade, including the disintegration of elephant society. Current estimates are that 38,000 elephants are being slaughtered each year in Africa. At this rate, elephants on that continent will all be gone in less than twenty years.
Yet poaching is not the only threat to elephants. They are captured for sale to elephant-back safaris, zoos, and circuses. Back in the 1990s in South Africa, when the elephant population grew too high, there was systematic culling. Entire families were darted from helicopters with scoline, which paralyzed them but did not render them unconscious. So they were fully aware as humans landed on the ground and moved systematically through the herd, shooting each elephant behind the ear. Eventually the hunters realized that the calves would not leave their mothers’ bodies, so they were staked to the corpses while the hunters got them ready for translocation. Some were sold abroad to circuses and zoos.
It is those elephants that are sometimes lucky enough to end their lives of captivity at places like The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. Although Thomas Metcalf’s New England Elephant Sanctuary is a fictional one, The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee is, fortunately, real. Moreover, the fictional elephants I created were all based on the true, heartbreaking stories of elephants from the Tennessee sanctuary. Like Syrah in this book, Tarra the elephant had a constant canine companion. Wanda’s real-life counterpart—Sissy—survived a flood. Lilly was based on Shirley, who endured a ship fire and an attack that left her with a badly broken hind leg, due to which she still moves awkwardly. Olive and Dionne, seen together throughout the book, are pseudonyms for the inseparable Misty and Dulary. Hester, the African elephant with an attitude, is based on Flora, who was orphaned in Zimbabwe as a result of mass culling. These ladies are the lucky ones—residents of only a handful of sanctuaries in the world dedicated to allowing elephants who have lived and worked in captivity to retire in peace. Their stories are only a tiny sample of those of countless elephants who are still being mistreated by circuses or kept in adverse conditions at zoos.
I’d urge any animal lover to consider visiting www.elephants.com—the website for The Elephant Sanctuary in Hohenwald, Tennessee. In addition to watching live elecams (be careful, you will lose hours of valuable work time), you can “adopt” an elephant, or make a donation in memory of an animal lover, or feed all the elephants for one day—no amount is too small, and all are so greatly appreciated. Please also visit the Global Sanctuary for Elephants (www.globalelephants.org), which is helping establish holistic, natural elephant sanctuaries worldwide.
For those who would like to learn more about poaching and/or elephants in the wild, or to contribute to those fighting to get international restrictions in place to prevent poaching, please visit: www.elephantvoices.org, www.tusk.org, www.savetheelephants.org.
Finally, I’d like to list the materials that were instrumental to me during the writing of this novel. Much of Alice’s research was borrowed from the remarkable real-life studies and insights of these men and women.
Anthony, Lawrence. The Elephant Whisperer. Thomas Dunne Books, 2009.
Bradshaw, G. A. Elephants on the Edge. Yale University Press, 2009.
Coffey, Chip. Growing Up Psychic. Three Rivers Press, 2012.
Douglas-Hamilton, Iain, and Oria Douglas-Hamilton. Among the Elephants. Viking Press, 1975.
King, Barbara J. How Animals Grieve. University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Moss, Cynthia. Elephant Memories. William Morrow, 1988.
Moss, Cynthia J., Harvey Croze, and Phyllis C. Lee, eds. The Amboseli Elephants. University of Chicago Press, 2011.
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff, and Susan McCarthy. When Elephants Weep. Delacorte Press, 1995.
O’Connell, Caitlin. The Elephant’s Secret Sense. Free Press, 2007.
Poole, Joyce. Coming of Age with Elephants. Hyperion, 1996.
Sheldrick, Daphne. Love, Life, and Elephants. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2012.
And dozens of academic papers written by researchers who continue to study elephants and elephant society.
There were many moments during the writing of this book when I thought that elephants may be even more evolved than humans—when I studied their grieving habits, and their mothering skills, and their memories. If you take away anything from this novel, I hope it is an awareness of the cognitive and emotional intelligence of these beautiful animals—and the understanding that it is up to all of us to protect them.
JODI PICOULT, September 2013
FOR JOAN COLLISON
A true friend will walk hundreds of miles with you, in rain, snow, sleet, and hail.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It takes an entire herd to raise an elephant calf. Likewise, it takes many people to bring a book to fruition. I am indebted to all these “allomothers” who helped shepherd my book toward publication.
Thanks to Milli Knudsen and to Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Martha Bashford for information on cold cases; to Detective Sergeant John Grassel of the Rhode Island State Police for his extensive tutorial in detective work and for always answering my frantic questions. Thanks to Ellen Wilber for the sports trivia and to Betty Martin for knowing about (among other things) mushrooms. Jason Hawes of Ghost Hunters, who was my friend long before he was a TV star, introduced me to Chip Coffey—a remarkable, talented psychic who wowed me with his insight, who shared his own experiences, and who made me understand how Serenity’s mind would work. Any of you nonbelievers out there—an hour in Chip’s presence will change your mind.
The Elephant Sanctuary is a real place in Hohenwald, Tennessee—twenty-seven hundred acres of refuge for African and Asian elephants who have spent their lives either performing or in captivity. I am so grateful to them for allowing me into their facility to see the astounding work they do to heal these animals physically and psychologically. I spoke with people who either are still working at or were associated with the sanctuary: Jill Moore, Angela Spivey, Scott Blais, and a dozen current caregivers. Thank you for grounding my fiction in reality, but, more important, thank you for the work you do every day.
Thanks to Anika Ebrahim, my South African publicist at the time, who didn’t bat an eye when I told her I needed an elephant expert. Thanks to Jeanetta Selier, senior scientist at the Applied Biodiversity Research Division at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, for being that storehouse of wild elephant knowledge, for personally introducing me to the herds in the Tuli Block of Botswana, and for vetting the accuracy of this book. I am grateful to Meredith Ogilvie-Thompson of Tusk for introducing me to Joyce Poole, who is as close as you can get to a rock star in the world of elephant research and conservation. Being able to speak firsthand to someone who has written some of the most seminal literature on elephant behavior is still mind-blowing to me.
I need to thank Abigail Baird, associate professor of psychology at Vassar College, for being my “research bitch,” for explaining cognition and memory and academic articles to me in a way that I could understand them, and for rocking a black fleece in 110-degree weather like no one else: There is no one with whom I’d rather piece together an elephant skeleton. Also part of the Botswana Brigade: my daughter, Samantha van Leer, the “bitchlet”—thanks for taking orders, for documenting the research with more than a thousand photographs, for naming her furry blue steering wheel cover Bruce, and for always having exactly what I needed hidden somewhere in her voluminous pants. In the wild, an elephant mother and daughter stay in close proximity their whole lives; I hope I am that lucky.
This book marks the beginning of a new home for me at Ballantine Books/Random House. I am so honored to be part of this incredible crew, who have been working behind the scenes for a year with explosive excitement about this novel. Thanks to Gina Centrello, Libby McGuire, Kim Hovey, Debbie Aroff, Sanyu Dillon, Rachel Kind, Denise Cronin, Scott Shannon, Matthew Schwartz, Joey McGarvey, Abbey Cory, Theresa Zoro, Paolo Pepe, and the dozens of other foot soldiers in their invincible army. Your enthusiasm and your creativity blow me away every single day; not all authors are this lucky. Thanks to the dream team of PR: Camille McDuffie, Kathleen Zrelak, and Susan Corcoran: Best. Cheerleaders. Ever.
Working with a new editor is a little like an old-world Orthodox wedding: You trust people to pick your partner, but until you lift that veil, you don’t really know what you’re getting. Well, Jennifer Hershey is—by those standards—a stunner of an editor. Her insight, her grace, and her intelligence shine through every comment and suggestion. I think Jen’s heart bleeds as much across every page of this novel as mine does.
To Laura Gross—what can I say, except that my life would not be what it is without your support and your tenacity. I adore you.
To Jane Picoult, my mother—who was my first reader forty years ago and is still my first reader today. It’s because of the relationship and love between us that I could write Jenna in the first place.
Finally, to the rest of my family—Kyle, Jake, Sammy (again), and Tim—this is a book about keeping the people we love close to us; you guys are the reason I know why that’s the most important thing on earth.