Throughout her blockbuster career, number-one New York Times best-selling author Jodi Picoult has seamlessly blended nuanced characters, riveting plots, and rich prose, brilliantly creating stories that “not only provoke the mind but touch the flawed souls in all of us” (The Boston Globe). Now, in her highly anticipated new book, she has delivered her most affecting novel yet – and one unlike anything she’s written before.
For more than a decade, Jenna Metcalf has never stopped thinking about her mother, Alice, who mysteriously disappeared in the wake of a tragic accident. Refusing to believe that she would be abandoned as a young child, Jenna searches for her mother regularly online and pores over the pages of Alice’s old journals. A scientist who studied grief among elephants, Alice wrote mostly of her research among the animals she loved, yet Jenna hopes the entries will provide a clue to her mother’s whereabouts.
Desperate to find the truth, Jenna enlists two unlikely allies in her quest. The first is Serenity Jones, a psychic who rose to fame finding missing persons – only to later doubt her gifts. The second is Virgil Stanhope, a jaded private detective who originally investigated Alice’s case along with the strange, possibly linked death of one of her colleagues. As the three work together to uncover what happened to Alice, they realize that in asking hard questions, they’ll have to face even harder answers.
As Jenna’s memories dovetail with the events in her mother’s journals, the story races to a mesmerizing finish. A deeply moving, gripping, and intelligent pause-resister, Leaving Time is Jodi Picoult at the height of her powers.
Msali As a fan of Jodi Picoult, I was looking forward to reading her new novel. By the time I finished reading this novel, I was left with a feeling of astonishment. It is at once a storyline of such depth on the research of grieving elephants, and so rich in the storylines of those involved.Jenna Metcalf’s mother, Alice, disappeared after a caregiver was trampled by an elephant. Jenna’s father has been in a psychiatric institution since that time, and Jenna lives with her grandmother…
SUPERB MYSTERY! This is a very unique, unusual and entertaining mystery thriller. Really unlike anything I’ve read before. At the base of it is a teenage girl(Jenna) searching for her missing mother. Jenna must puzzle out why her mother, Alice, disappeared from the New England Elephant Sanctuary. What separates this mystery from others is that Picoult weaves the emotional lives of elephants with that of Jenna and Alice and other human characters. It’s really haunting how she depicts grief and loss and can get…
“Leaving Time” Ripped My Freaking Heart Out No spoilers!I just closed this book, and I was actually sobbing From the start, it’s a slow burn– each character gets their own chapter, part of it’s in past tense to slowly fill in information– and it doesn’t take long to care deeply about each of them. I’d follow each of these characters off a cliff.Emotion aside, this was a fabulous read. The entire plot is heavily centered on elephants– how they grieve and how scientists try to reckon what can be observed…