Author Diane Hammond was lucky enough to work with Keiko the killer whale when he was being rehabilitated and returned to the wild. She expected to later write about the experience, but that story proved too dear. Instead, Hammond wrote Hannah’s Dream, the story of an elephant in a dilapidated private zoo in the state of Washington.
Although this book is fiction, it presents all the true-life circumstances that zoos face when keeping an animal that is meant to live in the wild, among others of its own kind.
Poor Hannah has been captive since she was a very young elephant. Rescued on safari and shipped to Washington state, she has spent a lifetime at the Max Biedelman Zoo. At first, there was another elephant at the zoo with her, but that was a long time ago. Hannah has been the only elephant for forty-one years.
Fortunately, Hannah’s caretaker, Sam, loves her more than anything else in the world, and only wants what’s best for her. Like most captive animals, what’s best for Hannah is often at odds with what’s best for the zoo’s financial future. While the ambitious new zoo director tries to revitalize the zoo with Hannah at its center, Sam and his new assistant do their best to enrich Hannah’s dreary existence until they can figure out a way to get her into an elephant sanctuary.
This is delicious fiction, with a cast of three-dimensional sympathetic characters all following their own paths. When those paths intersect, the result is magical. Hammond has written a gem of a book that every animal lover will want to read.
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