Beginning ~ with an elephant graveyard

This book seems to be narrated by two characters, Jenna and Alice, so I've decided to share each of their opening lines.

Jenna
Some people used to believe that there was an elephant graveyard — a place that sick and old elephants would travel to to die.
Alice
When I was nine — before I grew up and became a scientist — I thought I knew everything, or at least I wanted to know everything, and in my mind there was no difference between the two.

Leaving Time ~ by Jodi Picoult, 2014, fiction

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.

When I put this book on reserve, weeks before it was published, I was something like 400th in line.  As I checked it out today, there are still 424 people waiting for one of the 273 copies in the St. Louis County Library system.  This novel debuted as the #1 New York Times bestseller on October 14th.

Gilion at Rose City Reader hosts Book Beginnings on Fridays.  Click here for today's Mister Linky.