In a treasure-filled, decaying mansion in Little Rock, Arkansas, in the 1950s, Baldwin Howell, her daughter Eulalia and her granddaughter Shelby have been keeping secrets and sorrows for years, all related to the mysterious disappearance of Shelby’s father when she was a child. After he went missing, Shelby had been stripped of his name, Korzeniowski, when her formidable grandmother took her to the courthouse to have it legally erased. But Shelby has never given up her desire to know why her dashing, daring Polish pilot father had flown away and vanished.
Now 21 and recently crowned Miss Little Rock, Shelby leaves for New York City, ostensibly to find fame as an actress but secretly planning to search for her father. So begins a journey of self-discovery–emotional, intellectual, and sexual–as Shelby tests the boundaries of southern expectations and racial taboos. Having learned more than she bargained for, family tragedy calls her back to Little Rock, just as the city is erupting over the forced integration of the high school.
Kidnapping Elephants is a riveting, romantic family saga set in a momentous time in the history of the South. Grappling with themes of choosing the right person to forgive and the right person to love, the novel unfolds during the struggle for civil rights, a time when racial biases are both easing up and tightening down, creating a cauldron of tension, cruelty, and violence. It is also a powerful story of unconscious racism giving way to enlightened humanism–and of love conquering all.