Sara Gruen tells two stories here: the day-to-day contretemps and frustrations of a decrepit old man in a nursing home….a fairly friendly one but still a nursing home…and his recollections of his days as a circus vet which begin with his dropping out of Cornell Veterinarian School just before his final examinations because his parents, already almost insolvent because his depression-era clients can’t pay his father their vet bills, are killed in an automobile accident.
Depressed and desperate, Jacob Jankowski, college drop-out, hops a freight car and finds himself with some workers in a small time circus. Narrowly avoiding being thrown out, Jacob begins the first of eights years working with circus animals including proud prancing horses, an almost human elephant, a toothless lion, winsome apes and treacherous tigers.
Workers in a small traveling circus, often not paid, traveled and sometimes slept with the animals but were usually fed in a time when food was scarce. The performers fared better than the workers, but even they confronted dangerous situations more often than not. This circus comes to an end when a fire stampedes the animals right through the Big Top.
Adding to the excitement is the violent jealousy of a psychotic animal trainer, the love of a beauteous lady horse-troop mistress, and the revenge of a terribly mistreated elephant.
Jacob goes on to successful years with a big circus and then a municipal zoo and even his nursing home tribulations yield to one last adventurous excusion.
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