Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

Okay, here's an adult book!  If you haven't read it yet, you need to before they make it into a movie and ruin it by having that vampire kid play the lead role.  It's set during the Depression and Prohibition and follows an orphaned and destitute young man as he joins a traveling circus.  What a great story!  Michel couldn't put it down when he read it, either.  I love how it goes back and forth in time, showing the main character as an old man in a nursing home.