Soraida Salwala started the first elephant hospital in the world, realizing a childhood dream. In Elephant Rescue, Fitzgerald recreates Soraida's life-changing experience with an elephant; here he describes finding the perfect actors to play the role of Soraida and her father: "To achieve the reconstruction I had auditioned 12 eight-year-old girls and 12 men who looked the part. This all took place in a hotel in Chiang Mai and was perhaps one of the most bizarre events of my checkered career. None of them spoke English and my Thai is limited to an embarrassing vocabulary of "please" and "thank you." So with the aid of interpreters, I struggled through trying to make these small girls look sad, surprised and shocked, and their potential fathers look like caring parents. All this in the hotel lobby in front of an audience of bemused Japanese tourists, who probably thought it was some kind of cabaret. In the end I settled on a father-and-daughter team who looked great."