Our editor in chief Jane Francisco is going to be in Washington, D.C. on August 6th for a special event with Jodi Picoult: live music, dinner, wine, and desserts from Good Housekeeping…plus a sit-down with Jodi to discuss her new novel, Leaving Time, due out in October. (All guests will get their own copy, months early — and a few tickets are still available!)
Here's a quick taste of what Jane and Jodi will be talking about:
Jane: Tell me a bit about the book. I understand it's about a daughter searching for her mum. And the mum was an elephant researcher?
Jodi: Sure! Jenna Metcalf was three when her mom, Alice, mysteriously disappeared after a terrible accident. Jenna has never stopped thinking about Alice, and refuses to believe that her mom would have abandoned her. So Jenna searches for her mother 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 that the entries will provide a clue to her mother's whereabouts.
Jane: What did you learn about the plight of elephants in the process of writing Leaving Time?
Jodi: I did research in Botswana for this book, as well as at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee. What I learned about elephants — their capacity not just for cognition but for what looks very much like emotion — astounded me. It's hard to dismiss animals with behaviors like that, and yet currently there are estimates that 38,000 elephants a year are being killed by poachers in Africa. When poachers kill, they go after the largest elephants — males first, and then the matriarch of a herd. Once the matriarch of a herd is killed, so is the family's collective knowledge. For this reason, there is massive collateral damage caused by poachers.
For more details and ticket info about this event from Random House (publisher of Leaving Time) and Good Housekeeping, go to goodhousekeeping.com/jodipicoult.
