One morning, author Sara Gruen, cup of tea in hand and dog by her side, opened a copy of the Chicago Tribune and saw a vintage photo of a circus. In an instant the image captivated her so much that she knew she would abandon her current novel-in-progress to write a story set under the Big Top. Practically joining the circus herself as she immersed herself in research, she created a story filled with colorful characters, lovable animals and evil villains, and catapulted herself from an out-of-work technical writer to the author of a major bestseller, Water for Elephants (Alconquin Books, $23.95).
As she told members of the Indian River Literary Society at a recent meeting, the inspiration for Water for Elephants came from a photograph by Edward J. Kelty, who traveled with train circuses following World War I documenting their activities.
He used a camera that produced 12×20-inch negatives, yielding pictures of exquisite quality and astonishing detail. He then sold his photos to the circus performers, who would resell them at a profit. The particular photo Gruen saw in the newspaper that morning showed a circus crowd taken from the roof of a truck. The photo contained such vivid details, she recalled, that “I could see the wrinkles in the ladies’ stockings.”
Immediately, she ordered Step Right This Way, a book of Kelty’s photographs taken from the mid-1920s to the ’40s. Fascinated, she studied the portraits of clowns and pictures of sideshow attractions, elephants, menageries, aerialists and equestrians, train crews and workers in the cookhouse.
Read the entire article in the April 2009 issue
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