Photographs inspire a fictional circus

Jul. 18--The animals in Sara Gruen's novels often steal the show from their human counterparts. Her first two books -- Riding Lessons and Flying Changes -- centered on the world of competitive show jumping. Her latest novel, Water for Elephants (Algonquin, $23.95), features a lovable, pivotal circus elephant named Rosie that only understands Polish.

It's no surprise then that Gruen shares her home with a menagerie that rivals that of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, the fictional, Depression-era circus that boasts Rosie as its star.

"My house is filled with rescued animals of various stages of old age and decrepitude," she says from her home outside Chicago. The current count? Two dogs, three cats, two goats and a horse.

Gruen's sympathy for those who have been dealt a set of hard knocks extends beyond animals. In Water for Elephants, the story of Jacob, a young veterinary student who literally runs away to join the circus, is set against the impoverished backdrop of the Great Depression. The narrative unfolds in a series of flashbacks as an elderly Jacob -- he can't remember whether he's 90 or 93 -- languishes in a nursing home.

Water for Elephants also reminds readers of jake leg, a forgotten form of paralysis that appeared in the early '30s among poor alcoholics who, in an effort to beat Prohibition, drank Jamaican ginger-root extract only to find that it contained a toxic plasticizer.

"There was an article in the New Yorker a couple of years ago, which was how I found out about it," Gruen says. "The only way that the author knew about it was from a couple of blues songs from '30 and '31. He did a little bit of research into it and discovered this horrible thing."

Gruen did plenty of research herself, spending months of reading obscure books, visiting circus museums in Sarasota and Baraboo, WI. But there was one instance when historical sleuthing couldn't substitute for first-hand observation. So, she traveled to Kansas City and spent a couple of days at the zoo, watching the elephants.

Q: You were inspired to write Water for Elephants after reading an article on Edward J. Kelty, a Depression-era circus photographer, in the Chicago Tribune. Why did those photographs inspire you?

A: They were just so evocative, and the amount of detail in them was incredible. I just kind of got lost in the pictures, and I realized it was a setting where anything can happen.

Q: The 1930s were the heyday of traveling circuses. Is that why you chose to set the novel during the Depression?

A: I specifically chose 1931 because I wanted to incorporate the tragedy of jake leg into the novel. It was also a period of time that I didn't know much about it. It was a very dire time for our country, and I wanted to learn more about it.

Q: What interested you about the jake-leg tragedy?

A: It just completely sunk off the radar. It affected at least 100,000 people. Just a huge number of people's lives were destroyed. At the time there was no sympathy, no support because [the victims] were on the fringes of society. It was a very distinct paralysis. You could tell from the way someone walked whether they had jake leg, and they were ostracized.

Q: Many of the novel's plot points are inspired by real events. Were there any stories that you came across that you rejected because they seemed too implausible?

A: There's one that I found out about later, but I'm not really sure I'd have included it in the novel. This former clown told me that half of the cooch girls [peep-show performers who moonlighted as prostitutes], unbeknownst to the owners and most of their clients, were actually transvestites. According to the clown, many Midwest farm boys would be startled to learn that.

Q: Why did you choose to tell the story via the flashbacks of an old man in a nursing home?

A: I don't write from an outline. I write mechanically. When I got ready to write, I just discovered this old man in my head, and so I let him talk. It was a little bit scary how easy it was for me to get into character.

Q: You were on the verge of writing an entirely different novel before coming across Kelty's photographs. Are you going to write that novel now?

A: I picked it up again after I finished the book, but I think it just died on the vine. I wasn't having much fun. I was doing a lot of shopping on eBay. Then my mother sent me a link about Bonobo apes, and I had an 'Aha!' moment. So I'm going to write about them.