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Overview
Overview
An emotional, rousing novel inspired by the incredible true story of two giraffes who made headlines and won the hearts of Depression-era America.
"Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes..."
Woodrow Wilson Nickel, age 105, feels his life ebbing away. But when he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling the unforgettable experience he cannot take to his grave.
It's 1938. The Great Depression lingers. Hitler is threatening Europe, and world-weary Americans long for wonder. They find it in two giraffes who miraculously survive a hurricane while crossing the Atlantic. What follows is a twelve-day road trip in a custom truck to become Southern California's first giraffes. Behind the wheel is the young Dust Bowl rowdy Woodrow. Inspired by true events, the tale weaves real-life figures with fictional ones, including the world's first female zoo director, a crusty old man with a past, a young female photographer with a secret, and assorted reprobates as spotty as the giraffes.
Part adventure, part historical saga, and part coming-of-age love story, West with Giraffes explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, the passing of time, and a story told before it's too late.
- Format: TradePaperback
- Author: Rutledge, Lynda
- ISBN: 9781542023344
- Condition: Used
- Dimensions: 8.20 x 1.10
- Number Of Pages: 372
- Publication Year: 2021
Customer Reviews
Rating Snapshot
5 ★
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5 Ratings
60
60% Would Recommend
3 Recommendations
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Great adventure
Would RecommendBethany G. - 3 months agoGreat adventure book with bits of historical fiction. Easy to imagine this book as a screen adaptation someday. It has a core message of love of animals and the healing presence they can provide..
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West With Giraffes
Would RecommendCatherine K. - 4 months ago"West with the Giraffes” is an excellent read for anyone who likes to read about special events that took place in American history. The story takes place during the Dust Bowl era and the economic Depression of the 1920s. It is a first person account told by a young orphan, whose travels to find work takes him to New York City from Oklahoma. He narrates his story with each passing day of taking risks and joining up with a grouchy man John Riley. Riley is transporting two African giraffes that came by boat and made it through a hurricane at sea. There are many adventures on the road from New York City to San Diego. The writer’s story line and characters give a colorful account of the events during the long journey that kept me on the edge of my seat.
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One of my favorites
Would RecommendJoy M. - 6 months agoBeing that it's historical fiction, the plot captured me, and I realize how wonderful giraffes are.
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Sometimes "the gentlest of giraffes save us from the fiercest of lions."
Jennifer E. - 4 years 7 months ago“As the country teeters between a depression and Europe’s looming war, a pair of...towering creatures of God’s pure Eden, survivors of a hurricane at sea, left a wake of much-needed cheer while driven across country.” After traveling 12 days and 3,200 miles, the first giraffes arrive at the San Diego Zoo. The story is told from the dual perspective of a hard-knock boy in a Hard Times world of 1938 America and his curmudgeonly centenarian self in a nursing home 2020. The boy is on the run from secrets of his Panhandle past and discovers “if home...was not where you came from but where you wanted to be, then the rig, the Old Man, and the giraffes were more home--and more family--than any home I’d ever had. For a stray orphaned boy, this home seemed fiercely worth holding on to, with both fists, as long as I could. No matter what might be waiting for me up the road.” Along the way, he encounters a female photographer seeking “adventure--a proper one that made her heart sing...even if it couldn’t make her heart strong,” a girl who saw Africa--in the back of a truck, in the eyes of the giraffes--down the road going west...as daring and brave as could be...After hurricanes and mountains and bears and fat cats and flash floods--let alone reliving the worst day of my life,” the boy, girl, and Old Man see “the giraffes safe to the end of their trip’s story...If this is our ending, it’s a gotdam happy one.” The giraffes are welcomed by first lady zoo director (and my favorite character) Mrs. Belle Benchley, who “looks like a granny, dresses like a schoolmarm, swears like a sailor, and still charms snooty zoo galoots with their fancy education.” One of her most forward-thinking ideas was a school bus program that brought second graders to the zoo, fueled by her belief that the only way people will care about nature’s wild animals is to meet them,” which is exactly what our first graders do on our annual visit to Chicago's Brookfield Zoo! When my now fourth grader discovered Lynda Rutledge’s West With Giraffes on my desk, she chimed, “I remember feeding the giraffes on our field trip!” “Their lives lived among us” make “all who met them more alive to this world’s natural wonders most people never know or care about any other way.” “A world with no jolting giraffe joy or traveling bird waves or soaring forest glory seemed an ugly, barren, and soulless place fit only for the dust storms and the cockroaches and the likes of us...if ever I could claim to have seen the face of God, it was in the colossal faces of the giraffes...If that bit of God I saw in those sky-high wonders is still alive somewhere holy and true, a good soul will read these pencil scratches of mine...a story I should be leaving behind for them...and for you.” Lynda Rutledge’s novel is a resplendent reminder that sometimes it takes “the gentlest of giraffes to save us from the fiercest of lions…Salvation of any stripe is a matter of degrees.”
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West with Giraffes
Sylvia B. - 4 years 8 months agoIt is an engrossing read based on an unusual true story. I felt like I knew the main characters at the end, which is important to me.