Info about the Author

The book was about mother-daughter relationships and spirits/the supernatural, but sometimes it felt like it was about elephants. The amount of information about elephants is astonishing and seems to be true and researched, though I can't verify all of it. Here is an interview with the author while she talks about her research process. Do you guys think all the information and background on elephants helped the book or took away from the story? I found it interesting for the most part, but maybe it was a little overkill, like when it talked for about 3 chapters about Maura's various thoughts and actions and history as an elephant.

Title

Alice's flashback is home to the title explanation. "Lately, [Jenna] had been afraid to fall asleep. Instead of a nap, Jenna called it the Leaving Time. She was certain that if she closed her eyes, I would not be here again when she opened them." 

So first, that is Jenna's little bit of psychic ability, like Serenity talks about. She knows her mother will vanish. 

Also, I think maybe the book is called leaving time not just because Alice vanished, but because Jenna is still haunted by the idea that if she doesn't do everything to find her mother, she will lose her forever. (At least at the beginning of the book)

Sanctuaries IRL

There actually was a small elephant sanctuary in Maine up until about a year ago- Hope Elephants.

AND the Hohenwald, Tennessee one is real as well. Really real. And current.

The set-up is vaguely like Alice describes.
There are currently 12 elephants living there.
Here's a cute one.

Everyone is an Idiot

I don't know what to say, but I haven't posted in a while so I'm just gonna talk about how everyone in the book is an idiot. Just going down the line.
Jenna- She's 13, so I can't really blame her, but she's chasing after ghosts with help from a discredited medium and an alcoholic cop
Serenity- is actually pretty cool but her behavior with credit cards just to try and help a creepy little girl leaves some skills to be desired. Plus her recklessness lost her contact with the spirit world, so...
Virgil- Changing your first name does not change your identity. Or make it hard for people to find you. And drinking yourself to death just isn't too bright.
Alice- has had some bad luck, and made it about a million times worse with her stupid love life decisions and trusting men.
Thomas- is actually mentally unstable, so I can't judge his stupidity.
Gideon- awesome other than the sleeping with his boss while his wife is in the nearest building thing.
Nevvie- just kinda mean. Trusts Thomas.
Gideon's wife whose name I forgot- didn't tell Gideon she was infertile, which is some of why he cheated

I just kinda hate these people. And also love them.

Alice & Motherhood

Ok guys I accidentally accidentally finished the book, but I have lots to talk about so I can make this last until y'all are done. So today I'll talk about Alice and the sad things she says about motherhood. No spoilers but looking back on these excerpts knowing what I know now, it all makes sense. So maybe putting this together will make it obvious. 

• "Second, the devastating; A female elephant whose baby wasn't a baby anymore by any means still returned with a fury when he was in distress. Once a mother, always a mother" (118).
• "In the wild, a mother and daughter stay together until one of them dies" (188). 
• "If you are a mother, you must have someone to take care of. If that someone is taken from you, whether it is a newborn or an individual old enough to have offspring of its own, can you still call yourself a mother? . . . Staring at Kagiso, I realized that she hadn't just lost her calf She had lost herself" (199). 

These are just a few examples because after a certain point in the book I stopped taking down page numbers and just read and was sad, but you guys can see the theme starting to build. Alice ties her identity as a mother to Jenna, and we can see after she is born how much she means to Alice. Alice calls herself a bad mother, thinks that she is not there for Jenna when she follows Maura around for days, which is true, but she doesn't giver herself enough credit. Everyone at the sanctuary, with their messed up relationships to each other and craziness takes care of Jenna for a while, which they call allomothering in elephant herds. In elephant herds, all the females will take care of an infant, but the strongest bond is between the birth mother and her child. The same is true with Jenna and Alice. Even though Alice is often busy and delegates childcare, she cares more about Jenna then everyone else and vice versa. Both of their identities and thoughts are tied to each other so tightly its a little spooky. 

Forgiving and Forgetting

Page 217 is another one of Alice's flashbacks, this one with Gideon. She has two winning quotes- "forgiving and forgetting aren't mutually exclusive" and one that's said by Gideon, "it's amazing what they're willing to excuse".
Throughout this chapter the caretakers are taking care of the elephants as they'd take care of a kid, which is backed up by how Jenna saw all of them as her caretakers, so Gideon's mention of elephants excusing behavior may represent kids/Jenna excusing things. That, plus Alice's little opinion there, seems to be the first thing in a long time that points to a reconnection. I still don't believe Jenna and Alice WILL reconnect, but this makes that a possibility again.
However, forgiving not equalling forgetting may mean that Alice did something bad and Jenna may be unsure about being a family again.
I may be reading too far into that passage.

Jenna and Serenity

So I'm going to make a prediction and then back it up with some stuff.
I think this book is going to end without finding Alice alive, and with Serenity adopting Jenna.
Why?
Because Jenna hasn't seen her parents (lucid, that is) in years, her grandmother is absolutely not acting as a mother- she's acting as a caretaker at best, Serenity is weird, Jenna is weird, Serenity had all that motherly stuff in her car like junk food and knitting, and then there's that massive thing on 182 where Serenity catches Jenna and realizes that she needs a mother and Jenna kinda flips out a little. They are all hip together, and they had a fight but they keep reconnecting, and maybe this could be Serenity's spirit guides trying to do something good for her.
I don't think they would break however many years of silence so some annoying kid can find her super-shady mom. I think they are breaking their vow to not help her because the other side knows that she and Jenna need each other. This is more supernatural than most Picoult books, but I think we are about far enough in to start getting hints to the big twist.
I don't think this is going to be a simple mother-daughter re-connection anymore. I think there is something more going on.

Plus... Jenna's "in absentia" thing that she keeps saying about how she makes elephants seems to point to some other "in absentia" thing, like spirit guide help.