The Elephant in the Room

Gr 4-8–Sila Tekin lives in Oregon’s Willamette Valley with her parents, who immigrated from Turkey 14 years ago, but a problem with her mother’s paperwork means she has to return to Turkey to sort it out. What was supposed to be an eight-day trip stretches into months, and Sila misses her mother desperately. Two chance meetings provide the only thing big enough to take her mind off missing her mother: an elephant named Veda, purchased by an elderly lottery winner Sila met when her auto mechanic dad helped fix his truck. Gio Gardino—coincidentally, the widower of Sila’s beloved second grade teacher—is perfectly positioned to set up an elephant sanctuary, and Sila convinces her dad to let her work there over the summer. Sila includes her autistic school friend Mateo Lopez in her plan, and his mother, a Mexican American lawyer, later proves helpful to the Tekin family. Sila is at the heart of the story, told in close third person, but narration shifts in some sections to focus on Gio and Mateo and even, briefly, Veda. Each character wrestles with love and loss and struggles with decisions about when to act and when to wait; each in their own way has insight into the others, and empathy for them.