Read: West With Giraffes
Oh, how I loved this book!
The author Lynda Rutledge is 71 years old and has been a professional writer for 25 years. She has worked as a copywriter, a restaurant and film reviewer, a freelance journalist, and has done extensive travel writing. But Ms. Rutledge had taken a creative writing class in college long before her professional writing career, and was hooked right away. She earned an MFA in creative writing, and from then on all she dreamed about was writing a novel, and that dream never went away.
In 1999 she was working on a project researching the history of the San Diego Zoo for the Zoo’s Centennial. Looking through old scrapbooks in Archives, she found articles about two giraffes from Uganda, bought and paid for by San Diego Zoo director Belle Benchley, who were loaded on a ship for a 52 day, 3200 mile journey to the coast of New York. They then survived the Great Hurricane of 1938 wreaking havoc upon their arrival, and shortly after, the giraffes spent twelve days in a tricked-up pickup truck traveling all the way to the San Diego Zoo.
The Great Hurricane of 1938
Ms. Rutledge was a travel writer in 1999, but she continued to research the story of these two giraffes named Patches and Lofty. She learned Charley Smith was the head San Diego zookeeper in 1938 who was assigned the job of driving the giraffes to California. Belle Benchley was the first woman zoo director in the world who wanted to fight for endangered species and connect people with animals they might never otherwise meet. She in fact started a school bus program that brought 2nd graders to the zoo. She believed the best way to get others to care about nature’s wild animals was to meet them.
During her research work, Lynda kept thinking about how giraffes made her feel - they were intelligent -they made her smile, they made her calm down. She asked herself why animals do that to humans. She created a road trip white board she worked on for years which would become the makings of her novel “West with Giraffes’. Believing she had to have a basis for all of her characters, she created characters she connected with - Red, Woody, and Riley.. She said “if there is a suspension of belief and a rolling of their eyes from readers, that book is not worth reading.”
Ms. Rutledge continued to investigate this remarkable story about two African giraffes who came to America, and also to learn what America looked like in 1938 when they arrived. The book is full of well researched history and real life figures along with fictional characters, and is described by one reviewer with these words: “The author manages to wrap a travelogue, a historical novel, a social and political commentary, a coming of age story, and a love story in one book.” That is correct!
This story is narrated by Woodrow Wilson Nickel, a fictional character. In the beginning of the book, Woody is 105 years old in a nursing home, has no living relatives, and is watching TV in his room. He sees a giraffe appear on the screen and learns that giraffes have all but vanished. Woody feels a pressing need to get down on paper as quickly as possible the story of his lifetime which he surely cannot take to his grave. The world must know they have a responsibility to save animals and birds and trees from extinction, and Red’s daughter whose mother died when she was a baby needed to know her mother’s story. (Red is a character in the book who is a wannabe Life magazine photographer who is following the giraffes’ cross country trip)
Woody was only 17 when he left dust storms, black blizzards, near poverty, dark secrets, and his family who all lay dead, to set out for NYC where his cousin lived. There he encountered the devastating hurricane of 1938 and came across the two giraffes who had traveled from Africa and miraculously survived the hurricane. Woody locked eyes with them and felt an instant connection. “I felt something more soulful than I felt from the humans I knew.”
And so began Woody’s 3000-mile cross-country trip on the Lee Highway to California. He found himself driving the giraffes with Riley Jones aka Old Man, and frequently Augusta Red, the larger than life red-headed reporter documenting the journey to the San Diego Zoo.
Giraffes Lofty and Patches arrive at the San Diego Zoo, 1938
And what a journey it was, taken by this unlikely group with big secrets from their past lives. Their stories are all told against a backdrop of a world facing Hitler’s impending threat of World War II - a world still thick in the middle of the great depression after the stock market crash in 1929 - a world thick in the middle of the repercussions of the decade of black blizzards, dust pneumonia, and financial ruin during the Dust Bowl - a world of racial prejudice with Sundown towns and Green books - a world with women fighting for independence - a world that still practiced animal cruelty in some traveling circuses and traveling menageries - Hoovervilles - Card carrying Hobos and Bums - and of course the Great Hurricane of 1938. To me, living in that world explained why one of the newspaper’s articles wrote, “As the country teeters between a depression and Europe’s looming war, a pair of giraffes, survivors of a hurricane at sea, left a wake of much-needed cheer while driven cross-country to the San Diego Zoo, where Belle Benchley awaited.”
I won’t put in any spoilers except that 88 years later as Woody takes up his pen, he is confronted with news about the sixth extinction. He is desperate to get the world’s attention with his story.
When the pandemic came in 2020, Lynda Rutledge felt people were ready to read this story about a pair of giraffes. The novel was released in February, 2021.
Lofty and Patches lived at the San Diego Zoo for nearly 30 years. During that time they had seven offspring. One, born on June 6, 1944, was named D-Day. (heart emoji)
This story is endearing, heart warming, heart breaking, thoughtful, motivating, informative, and wonderful. Please join thousands and thousands of readers around the world and read this book.
WATCH: Giraffes: Africa’s Gentle Giants
GO: San Diego Zoo
