West with Giraffes: A Novel

Excellent book. Everyone in my book club loved it. Ms. Rutledge did an excellent job of blending a fiction and history.

Everyone LOVED this book. We all agreed that the author masterfully crafted true events and people into an engaging, memorable fictional narrative.

My son loves giraffes, so this book felt especially meaningful! I felt so connected to ‘Boy,’ ‘Girl,’ and Woody’s journey. West with Giraffes beautifully blends a story of self discovery with the miraculous true tale of two historic giraffes. The ending felt tough but purposeful—leaving a powerful message about protecting wildlife and the importance of conversation efforts. Loved this book and it’s celebration of giraffes!

If you enjoy William Kent Kruger or Amor Towles, you will also enjoy reading this book. The protagonist is a young boy, orphaned by the dust bowls of the 1930s. It is the story of his trip cross country to deliver two giraffes to the new San Diego zoo and the variety of folks he encounters. Excellent read.

June's book club read was West with Giraffes. The book begins with our main character in 2025 finding out giraffes were going extinct, and his death is nearing so he has an urgency to tell the world about his experience with the first two giraffes to come to the US. The book focuses on 1938 and the actual trek across the country with the giraffes. It is based on a true event - Two giraffes who arrive by boat in New York during a rare hurricane. The giraffe pair ("wild girl" and "boy") survive the catastrophic event with Wild Girl sustaining an injury. Next stop for the giraffes is the cross country road trip to the San Diego zoo. Enter 17 year old Woody Nichol, a down on his luck survivor of the the dust bowl in Texas, who traveled to NY seeking a new life and hoping to put his bad past behind him. Helping save the giraffes, he desperately wants to go with them to "Californy" where he knows he can start a new life. This means lying to the Old Man Riley Jones, who is the zookeeper entrusted to drive the giraffes safely to their new home, so he claims he can drive a truck safely to replace the previous disposed driver. (He ends up learning fast and being a safe driver though, just unlicensed) I really enjoyed the story, which takes place during the seven (?) day drive from NY to San Diego but also visits the future as Woody writes his story to pass on to someone before he dies. The connections between the main characters and the giraffes was so poignant, and emphasized how much animals love and accept people for what they are. There were some truly evil people in the book who were cruel to animals and sought to take the giraffes, but these parts were interspersed with the driving hours and the good people and the public who genuinely were fascinated and intrigued by the cargo, including the mysterious Red and her Packard. I found it a bit frustrating that all the characters lied in the book, but in the end we find they had good reasons and they all grew from this meaningful experience in their life. I wish the author had included the photos of trucks and giraffes from the time period. I ended up googling them to get a better picture of how the giraffes were transported across country- I strongly recommend doing this!. I also had to find out if giraffes are extinct, or endangered. According to enviromentalbuddy.com, "Technically, yes. Officially, not so much…Giraffes are in grave danger. The population has waned 40% in 30 years, and there are now roughly 68,000 left in the wild. What is left of the herds are unbalanced and face quite a lot of threats, from poaching to habitat loss. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the paramount standard for evaluating endangerment, has found that giraffes are “vulnerable,” indicating that they are under a “high risk” of extinction in the wild. And for some of the nine sub-species, this threat is looming. Sadly they are at dangerously low levels" and they are trying to classify them as endangered to protect the remaining species. So sad... I can't imagine their purr permanently gone from this earth. This was an excellent book on the relationships between people and animals, how much they can help people heal, and how some people will never understand animals and the love and affection that animals can bring to our lives. Also emphasized is the friendships among people. This was an excellent selection for book club , with plenty of good discussion questions available online. Again, just google it... This would make an excellent movie, imo. People who enjoyed Water for Elephants, The One and Only Ivan, The Night Circus and How the Penguins Saved Veronica will adore the witty, charming, and heartwarming West with Giraffes