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.

More developments with Thomas

So at first I thought Thomas seemed a little timid. He wouldn't really stand up to Alice. When they disagreed he would just kind of let it go. But on page 179 he showed a different side. Trying to avoid spoilers, but he acts out at Jenna, thinking she is Alice, and shows that he is capable of hurting her. Emotionally capable at least idk. Virgil thinks that he did this because Alice cheated on him but that still doesn't make it ok. Also it was weird how Jenna didn't seem very angry at her father. She was upset but she lashed out at Virgil instead, and said it wasn't her fathers fault because he's crazy. I think Alice probably left town to escape Thomas and may be alive with Gideon now, but it will be hard for Jenna to accept this.

Death

I don't know what to think about Alice. All. Her research seems to point to her being dead, since it's about death. But the thing with the elephants thinking she's dead... And she says she was full of life. I feel like these elephant things must be hints. My latest theory is that she abandoned her old life, possibly because of Thomas, possibly because of the other girl's death, possibly because of amnesia. And then she started a new family. I think she has new kids, and she's pregnant again. AHH. This book is so confusing. There are so many mysteries.

Warning!! Spoilersish: Alice & Thomas's Relationship

Ok so I read a little bit ahead so just be warned there may be some extra details that I'm about to spoil.
So Virgil seems to think, or at least consider the possibility, that Thomas was an abusive husband and Alice ran away to get away from him. The evidence so far pointing to this is:
-She allegedly told someone she was afraid of him the night she disappeared (although this came from Gideon so more on this later)
-He was super angry and thought she had stolen his notes because they made her research seem likes kid's stuff (so there was some weird jealousy anger issues in their relationship)
-Thomas was mentally unstable before the incident and was on numerous medications and his psychotic break afterward shows he was not in a good place mentally (although the medications were anti depressants which don't usually give the user a tendency towards violence as far as i know)
Heres the evidence saying he didn't abuse her:
-All of Jenna's flashbacks of her parents relationship involve them bickering but her father is more loving in these flashbacks and is never described as violent in any way toward her mother
-He evidently still loves and admires her, as shown when he thinks Jenna is her mother when she visits
-The Alice-told flashback of how they met was super cute and I know that that doesn't mean he didn't end up being abusive but I really want him to be a good person or else I'm never trusting a man ever again in my life
Something thats only been kind of hinted at on the other hand, is that Alice cheated on Thomas. Heres why I think its true
-When Jenna is having that dream/memory of playing hide &seek and then her dad and mom kissing she says at the end that she remembers her mom being in it so the man must be her dad except sometimes when she pictures it, it isn't (thats super sus, i dont think an author would just stick that in there for no reason)
-Remember that Gideon guy that was formerly working at the sanctuary? well evidently he and alice were pretty buddy-buddy because his wife was dead and he was the only one alice told her fears and issues with her husband too. at least thats what he said. but even if he made that up, still points to the fact that there could be something between them. also thomas made some passive aggressive comment when Gideon asked where she was like "isn't she with you" or "i assumed she was with you" like wow jealous much and Gideon is like no im so worried but you could tell in his head he was thinking "@ me next time I would make a better husband for alice anyway you crazy little skinny dude" anyway thats what I would be thinking
-One of Alice's flashbacks was of her mother protesting that it isn't biologically normal for any animal in the world to be monogamous while her dad was like but what about swans and what about us you are the best i love you even though you don't think being with me is natural (sounds like her mom is one of those animals am i right ladies??)
What do you guys think? Was Thomas abusive and thats why Alice ran off? Did she cheat on him because of their marriage issues or did their marriage issues come from cheating? Or did she cheat at all?

Just A Thought

Okay, so I'm not really good at commenting on things...but I just want to say I like the way this book is written. The elephant poem in the beginning of part one was a nice little touch, and the breaking up of chapters is interesting. Just a little thing I wanted to say. I am ready to continue reading the book and see what else Picoult adds in for ~fun~

Elephant Stampedes

The caretaker that died in the elephant sanctuary was supposedly trampled by a stampeding elephant. One of the detectives asks Thomas Metcalf how an elephant managed to sneak up on someone, considering their size and how much noise they make. He asked them if they'd ever seen an elephant stampede and hoped they wouldn't as an answer. I found this video of a herd of elephants stampeding. Honestly, I wouldn't be able to tell they were stampeding if the video wasn't titled it. They are moving quickly, but not as fast as the average person could run. The whole herd moving together is pretty intimidating, but not as scary as Thomas Metcalf made it sound. One interesting aspect of this video is when the narrator describes how most of the elephants don't know why they are stampeding, they just go along with the crowd, similar, he says, to a stampede of people at a stadium. The book keeps making connections between the actions of elephants and humans and characters finding them to be intellectual equals. (Virgil for instance) This is just another possible connection.

Alice and Amnesia

On page 100, Alice talks about the two elephants, Owala and Durgal/ Felicia and Natch. They led a really hardcore tribe of elephants, but when they were visited by a former trainer, they became completely docile and acted like they would act in the training environment. They almost had two personalities, and the personalities were activated by their surroundings.
All this points to Alice having some sort of disconnect to her former life. I think she has amnesia, which explains why she's not going back to her daughter, or making any attempt to contact her. She is disconnected because of amnesia.

Thomas

So, Thomas is Alice's husband and Jenna's father. Also, he's in a catatonic state and his history is awful and full of doubt. To review the facts we've learned about him, here's a post. We learned a lot from the cop's point of view chapter. He was fighting with Alice a lot before the elephant stampede. He had depression, severe enough that he was on three different medications. He did not trust Alice AT ALL, shown by his thinking that he would steal his notes and prevent him from getting a major breakthrough  in the elephant field because it would discredit his research. So that's one screwed up relationship in the book. But, he was worried about Jenna's well-being, so he's not a bad person, he just doesn't trust Alice, which could speak to either of their credibility and personality. Then again, he mentioned stolen research again in the asylum, so he may just be paranoid.
More importantly, he thought he was close to finding a cure to PTSD using elephants in his research, which is INCREDIBLE and must be a hint at something. His psychological state is awful, and may point to psych issues in Jenna's later life, or may even discredit everything he says. Thomas has a very obvious psychological break a little later, where he chains up elephants and talks about getting "U0126" into their systems. Ah! I really don't know what's up with him, but his catatonic state is really interesting. He most likely has PTSD, given the catatonic state and the research, but he could have had something to do with Alice's disapearance.
So. With all that, and the slapping thing (I read a little farther) I think he has a disorder, somewhere between borderline and paranoid. He is paranoid, has mood swings, violent impulses, depression, amnesia, which can be caused by BPD and stress, and relationship issues.
What do you think?

Organization

For the sake of organization, I made a few pages that we can post on. General discussion stuff shouls be on the main page, but there is now a page for new mentions of elephants so we can analyze their symbolism, a page for the book's screwed-up relationships (I'm not sure if this is big but I've seen hints), a page for section summaries if you wamt those, and a page for analyses of the case. Put all the hints you find on there and maybe we can make some guesses. :)
Feel free to make more pages if I missed anything!

Serenity Jones

The psychic mentioned in the story, Serenity Jones is an interesting character so far and I started wondering if her character is based on a true person or story. The McCoy family sounded familiar and there were so many details about her cases I felt like it must come from real life. After looking it up I couldn't find any evidence of a psychic with that name, but I did find out Picoult wrote a short story just about her. It also surprised me that the chapter told from Serenity's point of view showed that she was actually psychic & mystical and such and it wasn't a fraud. I was not expecting the book to take a supernatural turn and I'm still kind of waiting for there to be some kind of rational explanation. Besides this I'm enjoying Serenity's story and I want to find out more about why her powers aren't working anymore. (Also lol at using the sassy-gay-man & black lady spirit guide trope)

Elephants, yo!

This book could have used any animal, so I'm wondering, why elephants? 

In order to keep us all on the same page going into this analysis, I did some research and found info about elephants.

They are massive, as everyone knows, but they're also brilliant, and they have incredible memories, even better than human memories. Symbolism wise, elephants represent different things. 

African cultures- strength and power

Asian - wisdom

Buddhists - authority

The female matriarch may also be symbolically significant