The story of three lives that intersect and inseparably intertwine, from postwar Paris to Tennessee to Kenya.

They're total strangers and yet, one September day in 1916, in a small Tennessee town, they witness the same horrifying sight: the execution of a female circus elephant guilty of killing a man. The experience forever alters the lives of Arabella, Kid, and Jeremy. From a country preparing to enter World War I to glittering 1920s Paris, jazz cabarets to circus tents to the debauched Kenya of English colonists, these three will become inseparable in their quest to rescue elephants. A dazzling saga love-crazed youth, the natural world, and the fight for rights both human and animal alike.