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  • The White Bone

  • A Novel
  • Written by: Barbara Gowdy
  • Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
  • Length: 10 hrs and 14 mins
  • 3.9 out of 5 stars (31 ratings)

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The White Bone cover art

The White Bone

Written by: Barbara Gowdy
Narrated by: Eileen Stevens
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Publisher's Summary

A thrilling journey into the minds of African elephants as they struggle to survive.

If, as many recent nonfiction best sellers have revealed, animals possess emotions and awareness, they must also have stories. In The White Bone, a novel imagined entirely from the perspective of African elephants, Barbara Gowdy creates a world whole and separate that yet illuminates our own.

For years, young Mud and her family have roamed the high grasses, swamps, and deserts of the sub-Sahara. Now the earth is scorched by drought, and the mutilated bodies of family and friends lie scattered on the ground, shot down by ivory hunters. Nothing - not the once familiar terrain, or the age-old rhythms of life, or even memory itself - seems reliable anymore. Yet a slim prophecy of hope is passed on from water hole to water hole: the sacred white bone of legend will point the elephants toward the Safe Place. And so begins a quest through Africa's vast and perilous plains - until at last the survivors face a decisive trial of loyalty and courage.

In The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy performs a feat of imagination virtually unparalleled in modern fiction. Plunged into an alien landscape, we orient ourselves in elephant time, elephant space, elephant consciousness, and begin to feel, as Gowdy puts it, "what it would be like to be that big and gentle, to be that imperiled, and to have that prodigious memory".

©1998 Barbara Gowdy (P)2017 Audible, Inc.

What listeners say about The White Bone

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Weird but great

Read this years ago, but still couldn’t stop listening. An amazing “read” and the narration was very well done.

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3 people found this helpful

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loved every moment!

brilliant, was tough to pause listening.... Absolutely beautifully narrated as well. Recommended! thank you!

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    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

all the anticipation and the ending was a disappointment so much was left unsaid and unknown.

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    1 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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Not my cup of tea

I struggled to finish this book. Had I not downloaded the audio version it never would have happened. Tedious to get through. Not a joy.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Good reading but depressing

Definitely don’t hope for many happy endings in this book. I was glad to get to the end.

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