A Perfect Friend

Reynolds Price

Jun 2002 · Sold by Simon and Schuster

About this ebook

A Moving Fable For Readers Of All Ages -- From National Book Critics Circle Award-Winning Author Reynolds Price

Ben Barks loved elephants long before he'd seen one. He sometimes wondered how that love started....

It's been a whole year since Ben's mother died, and nothing has soothed his broken heart -- except thinking about elephants, those magnificent creatures his mother loved too. Imagining their awesome grace always calms him in a way that his sad father and closest friends never can. When a one-ring circus comes to Ben's small town, he discovers Sala, an elephant who survived a wicked trainer's abuses. And soon, their powerful bond becomes a miraculous healer -- and gives Ben renewed hope for the future.

About the author

Reynolds Price (1933–2011) was born in Macon, North Carolina. Educated at Duke University and, as a Rhodes Scholar, at Merton College, Oxford University, he taught at Duke beginning in 1958 and was the James B. Duke Professor of English at the time of his death. His first short stories, and many later ones, are published in his Collected Stories. A Long and Happy Life was published in 1962 and won the William Faulkner Award for a best first novel. Kate Vaiden was published in 1986 and won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Good Priest's Son in 2005 was his fourteenth novel. Among his thirty-seven volumes are further collections of fiction, poetry, plays, essays, and translations. Price is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and his work has been translated into seventeen languages.