Book of the Week: LEAVING TIME by Jodi Picoult

 
Bestselling author Jodi Picoult is known for her books that delve into thorny family and social justice dilemmas, and Leaving Time (Random House Canada) is no exception. The book, which follows Alice Metcalf, an elephant researcher and her 13-year-old daughter, Jenna, grapples with love, loss and grief, both of the human and elephant varieties. To help solve the mystery of her mother’s disappearance in the wake of a tragic accident ten years before, Jenna enlists the help of a former TV celeb psychic who has lost her touch and the grizzly, guilt-ridden police detective who worked the original case and failed to solve it. A la her previous page-turner Lone Wolf (where an animal conservationist lives with a wild wolf pack in the Canadian wild) the intelligence and inner life of animals are as much a part of the prose as the people.

Releases in Canada on Oct. 14, 2014