Whistling for the Elephants

I first read Flying Under Bridges and adored that book. The author has an uncanny ability to present very dark and disturbing topics and then disect these topics to find the absurd, the laughable. I feel the author is very good at tying together her characters and, of course, developing them fully. Whistling for Elephants is a coming of age story, a memoir of sorts of a young awkward child in a dysfunctional family finding acceptance at a zoo with the zoo's staff---all of whome have interesting lives to share. It is much more than this, but that is the bare bones! Enjoy!

Whistling For The Elephants is the story of tomboyish Dorothy, who at the age of ten is whisked off by her parents to a small town in America where she struggles to fit in. During the long summer while all the other kids are at summer camp, she comes across the old zoo, and meets the strange people who live there. The zoo is endangered by the local redneck mayor, who wants to knock it all down and build a football stadium in its place. Only the women of the zoo can stand against him, and Dorothy learns much about history, the townspeople, and herself in the process. It's an excellent book, a tragicomedy rite of passage and it's a really good read. Well worth getting.