If nothing else, it is an imaginative feat. It is a matriarchal society, in some ways more primitive than ours but in others more advanced. Mud, for instance, is a visionary, able to see events that will happen in the future or that are happening at present in some other place. Others are fine scenters, able to track anything, and each family has one elephant able to read the minds of all animals. She-Spurns, because of her solitary nature.
Food is difficult to find, water even more so.
Human poachers are decimating herds in search of ivory. Everything about the elephants' way of life is in question. In this bleak landscape, the elephants find moments of hope, perhaps a small watering hole or an acacia with some bark left. And we follow, willingly. Gowdy handles the layers of longing and memory, the questions of belief and existence, with admirable subtlety and dexterity, and there's more than a little humor.