West with Giraffes - Rambling Readers

Paperback, 371 pages

Published Feb. 1, 2021 by Lake Union Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-1-5420-2334-4

(1 review)

“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 deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. 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, …

“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 deliver Southern California’s first giraffes to the San Diego Zoo. 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.

2 editions

knordstrom reviewed West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge

A story about a trip across 1938 America with a pair of giraffes and an allegory about time itself

5 stars

An excellent book made even more excellent as it was inspired by actual event. The author took a time and event where the San Diego Zoo was obtaining their first pair of Giraffes in 1938 and being transported across the US and filled in a little bit of history, that otherwise is now unknown, with characters of her own making. Fitting their story in a small pocket of history with some of the most monuments events in US and World history filling in as the backdrop.

It's a story about change and loss and about a word constantly moving on. Even in the first chapter when we first meet the main character and primary narrator, Woodrow Wilson Nickel, he's already passed and it's a VA liaison going through his belonging who finds and reads his narrative. From there and for the most of the rest of the book it's about …

An excellent book made even more excellent as it was inspired by actual event. The author took a time and event where the San Diego Zoo was obtaining their first pair of Giraffes in 1938 and being transported across the US and filled in a little bit of history, that otherwise is now unknown, with characters of her own making. Fitting their story in a small pocket of history with some of the most monuments events in US and World history filling in as the backdrop.

It's a story about change and loss and about a word constantly moving on. Even in the first chapter when we first meet the main character and primary narrator, Woodrow Wilson Nickel, he's already passed and it's a VA liaison going through his belonging who finds and reads his narrative. From there and for the most of the rest of the book it's about his adventures and his life, with the story coming back to the recent present occasionally with him in a nursing home writing the memoir and interacting with the staff.

The only downside I would say is that the ending feels a little less than satisfying at points, but that primarily because the author is constrained by actual history. Instead of embellishing or having an alternate history, this story fits neatly into our own universe in a part of history that would otherwise be a vacuum. But as the story draws to a close we get an ending that isn't typical for most novels but is one that probably far more realistic.