“The little elephant stared up at him, understanding, on some level, that this gentle human was different than the cobra-eyed ones who had hurt him and his family. Then he looked down at his mother’s body, slowly sank to his knees, and lay down beside her again.
Kamau couldn’t contain himself, and tears pooled in his eyes. At that moment he was ashamed to be human. “You stay here by your mother, little one,” he whispered. “I’ll be back with someone who can help, okay? I’ll be back as fast as I can.” He whirled and chased after the encroaching vultures, scattering them momentarily. Then he set off at a run.”
-Excerpt from Chapter Two
The tree creatures screeched as the branches above them whipped around from the wind of the false bird. It was coming closer and closer, as if somehow it knew I was in this very place. Then it stopped directly above me.
SYNOPSIS
"The Memory of an Elephant" is an epic saga told by an aging African elephant as he makes a last, perilous journey to find the humans who rescued him as an orphan some fifty years ago. Interwoven with his narrative are the tumultuous lives of the family who raised and then lost him: a famed hunting guide and his wife, who runs an animal orphanage (a conflict that in time upends their marriage); their son and daughter; and the young Kikuyu who finds the orphaned elephant and becomes part of the Hathaway family. This timeless story is alternately heartwarming and heartbreaking, spanning east Africa, Great Britain and New York from 1962 to 2015.