Sara Gruen's novel "Water for Elephants" takes place in the 1930s, during the Great Depression. Much of its story follows Jacob Jankowski after he joins a traveling circus during this economically desperate period.
The novel moves between Jacob's later life in a nursing home and his memories of his young adulthood. The central historical narrative is set around 1931, when circuses commonly traveled by railroad with performers, equipment, and animals. That setting places the book firmly in Depression-era America rather than in the early twentieth century generally.
Readers sometimes associate the novel with the 1920s because traveling circuses and vaudeville-style entertainment evoke that decade. However, the book's poverty, unemployment, railroad travel, and social conditions are specifically tied to the 1930s. The period is not just scenery: economic hardship shapes the circus's brutal working conditions and Jacob's decision to abandon his planned career in veterinary medicine.