Step right up for Gruen's 'Water for Elephants'

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Could a novel about a Depression-era traveling circus -- co-starring an extraordinarily loyal elephant named Rosie -- be this summer's sleeper hit?

Booksellers are hoping Water for Elephants (Algonquin, $23.95) by Sara Gruen will be the next The Lovely Bones or The Kite Runner.

Meg Smith, spokeswoman for the 1,700-member American Booksellers Association, says that "enthusiasm has been extraordinary." The novel is the No. 1 Book Sense Pick for June, a monthly list of 20 titles recommended by independent booksellers.

Publisher Algonquin has increased the print run from 15,000 to 70,000 books and bumped Gruen's book tour from five events to 30, from Monday through July 28.

"The buzz has spread like wildfire," says Algonquin's Michael Taeckens, who sent out "tons of galleys" to independents.

Gruen has published two other novels: paperback originals Riding Lessons (2004; about an accident that derails a promising horse rider) and Flying Changes (2005; a sequel).

Water for Elephants, her first hardcover, takes place during the early 1930s. The main character is Jacob Jankowski, a college dropout who winds up working as a circus veterinarian. The novel flashes between a nursing home where Jankowski, 93, lives and his circus days.

There's love, danger, cruelty (to people and animals), raunchiness, lawlessness, even murder.

At Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif., Kate Larson is an evangelist: "I just sold it to a gentleman who was going on a trip and wanted a guaranteed good read." The novel presents "a slice of America worth a visit," Larson says. "I didn't know anything about traveling circuses -- or care about them. It captures a moment in time that's extraordinary."

Chain booksellers are promoting it, too. At Barnes & Noble, it's on the summer reading tables, where the "most commercially viable books for the summer are kept," says Sessalee Hensley, B&N buyer. And Borders picked it for June's Original Voices program, which means it will get prominent placement.

But an early review in Publishers Weekly was tempered: "Despite her often cliched prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book."

With the book's official release date this week, the publicity push is gathering steam. But the jury for reviews is still out. The novel has been in some bookstores since mid-May. Initial sales have been slow at R.J. Julia Booksellers in Madison, Conn. But, floor manager Deborah Brooke says, "I don't have any worries because I love it so much."

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