The reader developed a close affinity to Marlene, the elephant, during the family's escape from Dresden. Morpurgo tied up all of the loose ends at the novel's end, but it felt as though Marlene was not only lost to the family but abandoned by the author. I needed more information to fill the void that lapsed in Marlene's life between the end of the war and the encounter that ensued in Toronto.

Favorite quotes:
Lizzie made the following observation as Russian forces bombed Dresden, Germany. "Antiaircraft guns were firing, firing, pounding away. But the planes just kept on coming, the blast of their bombs ever nearer, ever louder, roaring in our ears. The flames from burning houses and factories were licking high into the sky, leaping from one building to the next, from one street to the next, from one fire to another, each fire, it seemed to me, seeking out another fire to be with, so it could become an inferno, so it could burn more furiously." (p. 73)

"We had gone looking for Marlene, lost her, and now she had found us. We were on our feet at once, overjoyed, Karli kissing her trunk again and again, and Mutti stroking her ear, but telling her how naughty she had been to run away like she had. I looked up into Marlene's face, and saw the fires of the city burning in her troubled eye. She knew what was happening, understood everything. I was sure of it." (p. 75)

"We stood there on that bleak hillside, quite unable to take our eyes off the huge fireball that was rising now over the city. No words could speak our horror, no tears could cry our sorrow." (p. 87)