The Memory of an Elephant

The narrative begins in the present day, during the 2012 rainy season in Zambia. Dr. Ovidio Salazar, a surgeon, nearly hits a massive bull elephant on a highway near Lusaka. The elephant seems to look at him with concern before disappearing. Salazar reports the strange sighting, as there are no national parks nearby. The elephant, who narrates parts of the story, reveals he is old and making a long journey back to his birthplace. Trevor Blackmon, an assistant game warden, receives the report and views the elephant as a nuisance to be dispatched. He begins searching for a GPS tracking chip to locate the animal.

The story shifts to the elephant’s first-person memories of his birth in Kenya in 1962. He recalls his mother, Moon Mother, and the dangers of the wild, especially from humans, or “two-leggers.” After the herd’s matriarch, Red Eye, dies, a power struggle erupts between Moon Mother and another female, She Storms. During a river crossing, She Storms tries to drown the young calf. Moon Mother intervenes, savagely goring She Storms. The calf’s testimony leads to She Storms’s banishment, and Moon Mother becomes the new matriarch. The elephant’s memory then goes blank, jumping from his life with the herd to waking up on a human farm.

In 1964, a group of poachers on horseback ambushes the elephant’s herd. They kill Moon Mother and thirty-one other elephants, hacking off their tusks. The lead poacher attacks Moon Mother’s calf, the narrator, with a machete, leaving the blade embedded in his forehead. A fourteen-year-old Kikuyu boy, Kamau Matiba, who is on a solo rite of passage, discovers the massacre. He finds the calf still alive and runs to get help.

Kamau arrives at Salisbury Hill Farm, the home of professional hunter Russell Hathaway and his wife, Jean, who runs an orphanage for infant animals. Russell, his fourteen-year-old daughter Amanda, Kamau, and several staff members go to the site. Amanda is deeply affected by the carnage. They tranquilize the calf and bring him back to the farm. Jean, returning from Nairobi with her son Terence, develops a special formula to feed him. A local veterinarian, Dr. Hillary Cole, treats the calf’s wound but warns of a severe infection. That night, the calf suffers a high fever and delirium, but Jean and Kamau nurse him through it.

Kamau recognizes the lead poacher as Gichinga Kimathi, a bully from his village. Russell’s trackers, Kagwe and Mathu, trace the poachers to the township of Eldama Ravine and confirm Gichinga’s identity. Meanwhile, Kamau accepts a job at the orphanage and names the calf Anaishi, or “Ishi.” Russell and the local game warden, Ian Masterson, confront Gichinga, who is arrogant and warns them that powerful people protect the ivory trade. Gichinga is arrested but shows no fear.

Back in the present, Ishi travels at night, weak and hungry. Blackmon finds his tracks, confirming the surgeon’s report. The narrative returns to 1964, where Ishi learns from a passing wild herd that his birth family was slaughtered. He is overcome with grief. Gichinga is released from jail by a government official, confirming the corruption Russell was warned about. Humiliated, Russell joins a covert anti-poaching group. During one operation, he shoots and kills a poacher, an act that leaves him with deep remorse. Meanwhile, his son Terence endures severe bullying at his English boarding school.

In the present, Blackmon tracks Ishi by helicopter. Frustrated when Ishi hides in dense forest, Blackmon fires his rifle to flush him out, unintentionally wounding the elephant in the shoulder. The story returns to 1965, when Ishi escapes Salisbury Farm to join a wild herd led by a matriarch named Mother Blue. Jean and Kamau track him to ensure he is safe before Jean is called to London, where Terence has been severely injured by bullies. She decides to bring him home. Later that year, Ishi is attacked by a lioness and badly wounded. His new herd escorts him back to Salisbury Farm for treatment.

In the present, Jeremy Westbrook, the head of the private preserve Ishi escaped from, tracks the elephant to the town of Kabwe. He spots Blackmon preparing to shoot Ishi and intervenes. After darting Ishi to treat him, Westbrook discovers the fresh bullet wound. The preserve’s owner, Werner Brandeis, decides to fund and film Ishi’s entire journey home as a global media event.

Years earlier, in 1972, a wildfire separates a teenaged Ishi from Mother Blue’s herd. He finds refuge with a bachelor herd led by a wise but unstable old bull named Big Black. Realizing he is near the age when males are cast out of matriarchal herds, Ishi decides to stay with them. In 1974, Amanda, now a journalism student at Columbia University, joins a radical animal rights group led by her lover, Ariel Levine. During a raid on a lab, a security guard they tie up dies of a heart attack. Facing murder charges, Amanda makes a deal to testify against Ariel in exchange for her freedom and permanent deportation from the United States.

After Big Black dies, Ishi becomes the new leader of the bachelor herd. He has a brief, emotional reunion with Mother Blue. Soon after, poachers kill two members of his new clan. A hunter recognizes Ishi and alerts Russell, who, fearing for Ishi’s safety, has him captured and secretly shipped to the Sheffield Zoo in England. Ishi endures a traumatic journey and a lonely, confined existence. In 1977, Terence dies of a heroin overdose, a tragedy that leads to his parents’ divorce.

At the zoo, Ishi bonds with another elephant, Tatiana, who later gives birth to a calf. When a cruel keeper provokes Tatiana, Ishi intervenes to protect them both. As a result, Tatiana and her calf are sent to another zoo, leaving Ishi alone again. Years later, Amanda visits the zoo with her daughters and recognizes Ishi. She uses her influence as a journalist to arrange for his transfer, and he is moved to Werner Brandeis’s private preserve in Zambia, accompanied by Kamau. He becomes the leader of a bachelor herd there but always longs for his true home.

The story returns to the present day. In Tanzania, Ishi’s journey has become a media sensation. He is temporarily joined by another wild herd that escorts him part of the way. One evening, a scent on the wind triggers his full memory of his family’s massacre. He follows the scent to its source and finds Gichinga Kimathi. In an act of revenge, Ishi kills Gichinga and his entire poaching crew.

Ishi finally crosses into Kenya’s Tsavo National Park. He reunites with two brothers from his old bachelor herd. Together, they face a flooded river. With Kamau providing support from a skiff, Ishi makes a perilous crossing, barely surviving. He finally arrives at Salisbury Farm, where he has an emotional reunion with Kamau and Amanda. He is visited by other elephants from his past, including Mother Blue. After three days, knowing his end is near, Ishi leaves the farm. He journeys to the meadow where his family was killed fifty years earlier. As he dies, he has a vision of being reunited with the spirits of his mother and his clan. Kamau and Amanda find him in his final moments, sharing a farewell before leaving him to die in peace.

In the epilogue, Kamau continues to run the orphanage with funding from Brandeis. Russell dies at age ninety and is buried at Salisbury. Amanda moves to the English countryside and begins writing a novel titled The Memory of an Elephant.