You Should Read WEST WITH GIRAFFES by Lynda Rutledge
Giraffes at the San Diego Safari Park, December 2022. Photo by Kate Dusto
Reading Notes
One of the simpler joys in life is stumbling upon something—a food, a tool, a gadget—that afterward you can’t do without. My list, in no particular order, includes:
Balega running socks (I swear good socks extend the life of my shoes)
The lady at Staples who trims my piano books and spiral binds them so they lay flat
Pepperomia plants (one of the few varieties I can keep alive)
The After 7 loose leaf tea blend from English Tealeaves in Parker, CO
And my latest addition:
West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge
My neighborhood book club selects books based on the kits available at the library. In December, the only kit our friend Jenny showed up with was West with Giraffes, and I’m so glad she did!
This historical novel is based on an incredible true story. As Rutledge recounts in her author’s note, “In September 1938, on the orders of the zoo’s famous female director, Belle Benchley, two young giraffes survived a hurricane at sea, then were driven cross-country for twelve days in little more than a tricked out pickup truck.” What a gift for a novelist: A premise so good, it writes the pitch itself!
A visit to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, March 2015. Photo by Kate Dusto.
It is a fantastic premise, to be sure, but it’s Rutledge’s writing that makes this book special. At age 105, Woody is recording the story of the September when he was an orphaned teenager who stole, snuck, and lied his way into driving California’s first giraffes from New York to San Diego. Rutledge’s pacing is impeccable. As soon as Woody starts to find his footing in one scene, his other (figurative) shoe falls off. During his travels with the giraffes and the Old Man, who is responsible for their safe arrival in San Diego, Woody must fend off a disreputable circus scout, fix a flat tire, fit sixteen-foot-tall animals through tight tunnels, survive a flash flood, and drive a jerry-rigged trailer through steep mountain passes. On top of that, he’s also running from a tragic past in Texas and trying to figure out his feelings for Augusta Red, a photographer following the giraffes in the hopes of getting a photo essay published in Life magazine.
We surprised our girls with a trip to San Diego, December 2022. Photo by Kate Dusto
Woody is a protagonist with nothing to lose. His family is gone, and his prospects are as bone-dry as the Dust Bowl-ravaged land where he grew up. As he and the giraffes cross through Texas, Woody remembers the dark day in April 1935 when “a black cloud came roaring onto the horizon enough to scare a multitude of saints. . . . When it hit, it blackened the skies so bad that your hand in front of your face went unseen, the static in the air so bad that the slightest touch of anyone or anything turned sparks into black magic flames” (228). This nearly unbelievable scene brought to mind Timothy Egan’s The Worst Hard Time, a nonfiction account of the Dust Bowl that corroborates Rutledge’s description. It was only one example of many throughout the book where Rutledge’s research of the time was evident without becoming overbearing. Rutledge anchors her novel so deeply in the characters, including the two giraffes, that the historical context serves their story, rather than the other way around.
Another trip to Cheyenne Mountain Zoo, July 2024. Photo by Teresa Watt
The Old Man cautions Woody from the beginning that he “cannot abide a thief or a liar,” so in the spirit of transparency, here’s where I have to admit that I was at first skeptical about this book (sorry, Jenny!). I enjoy historical fiction, and I like books with animals. But I am wary of novels with anthropomorphized animals. Perhaps I’ve just read too many of these lately, but I find novels that grant narrative power to animals similar to pumpkin spice lattes: They’re clever the first time, cloying the second, and questionable thereafter.
To my delight, Rutledge managed to give unique personalities to the two giraffes in her story while also allowing them to remain animals. Woody takes to calling them Boy and Girl. We never have any idea how they might conceive of themselves or Woody or their surroundings, but I actually think that strengthens this novel. At the heart of Rutledge’s story is the essential paradox of animals: They’re mysterious and unknowable—and those very qualities make our connections with them more powerful. Overcoming our differences creates a stronger bond because we cannot communicate through language. We need only to open ourselves to the possibility.
At the Denver Zoo, March 2023. Photo by Kate Dusto
When Woody climbs into the giraffes’ crates to say goodbye, “the two blessed giraffes [begin] to hum. They had been humming to each other back in quarantine, and now they [are] humming with me” (311).
Animals teach us to recognize each other despite our differences. Woody finds great joy in his giraffes. I adored this book and hope it’s a title you can add to your list of joys, too.
Need-to-Know
Pub Date: 2021
Length: 339 pages; audiobook book runs 10.5 hours
Timeline: 2 weeks
Setting: a cross-country trip from NYC to San Diego in September 1938
Narrator: 1st POV of Woody, both in the present at age 105 and in the past at age 17 (as he’s writing a memoir at the end of his life); brief 3rd POV frame from a long-term aide; “artifacts” such as newspaper clippings and telegrams
Pairs Well With: Mary Coin by Marisa Silver; The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan; The Secret Life of Walter Mitty 2013 film adaptation; music of Aaron Copland
Fun Fact: This book is based on a true story! According to the author’s note, Rutledge was digging through the San Diego Zoo archives in 1999 when she “uncovered a batch of yellowed news clippings. . . . In September 1938, on the orders of the zoo’s famous female director, Belle Benchley, two young giraffes survived a hurricane at sea, then were driven cross-country for twelve days in little more than a tricked out pickup truck.”
Book Club
Recalling the end of his journey with the giraffes, Woody writes, “In the years ahead, through the War and beyond, it was this quiet day moving through the unmoving land with Boy and Girl and the Old Man and Red that I returned to when I needed it most. Like the jolting joy of giraffes amid the traveling bird wave, its peace passed any understanding, any attempt at words” (304). What is a moment from your life that you return to for peace?
Throughout the narrative, Woody uses the second-person “you” to address his reader. As he reaches his conclusion, he reveals that this “you” is in fact a specific reader. From his present age of 105, he describes this dream: “Then the rig vanishes. I’m back in bed, full awake, once again dreaming the dream of Red as an old lady in a little red house, opening a package and finding a giraffe. And I see it’s not Red. It’s you” (338). What was your reaction to this revelation? What scenes in the book foreshadowed this moment?
Close Reading
When it comes to say goodbye to the giraffes, Woody slips into their crate:
“For a moment, I drank in their mighty selves . . . their tall flanks no longer smelling of ocean but of earth. . . . . I stretched out my arms, until I was touching them both . . . and, at my touch, the two blessed giraffes began to hum. They had been humming to each other back in quarantine, and now they were humming with me. The deep, rolling thrums were so mellow that standing there touching their hides, I could feel my chest vibrating with them, their rumbling African croon echoing deep into the night and deep into my marrow.”
One of my favorite aspects of this book is that Rutledge allows the giraffes to remain animals. I love that they connect with Woody through a “hum.” According to Merriam-Webster, to hum is “to utter a sound like that of the speech sound” (emphasis mine). The giraffes communicate in a way that imitates speech but that isn’t speech itself.
As I mentioned earlier in this post, I have an history of disliking books with animal narrators. In the classroom, I’m constantly asking my students to interrogate their own responses. When I turned that lens on my own reaction, I realized it’s not talking/thinking animals that bug me. It’s when their narrative voice is a surprise. If I’m reading a book where an animal will be narrating, whether in a 1st or close 3rd POV, I want to know that from the outset. I only get annoyed when this voice occurs like a third of the way through the book without any warning. It feels like the author is breaking their promise to me as the reader. (Shelby Van Pelt’s Remarkably Bright Creatures worked for me because it’s clear from the first page that the octopus will be narrating.)
But Rutledge never hands the narrative reins to the giraffes. West with Giraffes is Woody’s investigation of himself, and the giraffes’ perspective would take away from his introspection. The giraffes are absolutely crucial to both the plot and Woody’s character development, but their importance rests in their animal nature. As a character, Woody needs to learn how to trust. This moment when he’s able to feel comforted by a non-human sound demonstrates his growing capacity to believe the best of others, even if they are giraffes.
Creative Writing
Fiction: Red keeps a note with a bucket list. Included on her list of “Things I’m Doing Before I Die” is “Touch a giraffe” and “See the world, starting with Africa” (34). Make a bucket list for your character. What do they want to do, see, eat, experience? Be as specific as possible. This is a great exercise in the early stages of character-building to get to know them.
Nonfiction: As Woody and the giraffes cross into Tennessee, they stop at a roadside store. Woody reads the headline in a newspaper: “In letters as big as my fist, it said HITLER INVADES CZECHOSLOVAKIA: ‘Thus Begins Our Great German Reich.’” Woody’s story is simultaneous with big world events, including the Great Depression and the lead-up to WWII. Think about the events in your life. Make a list of major occurrences at the local, state, national, and global level during your lifetime. Then, choose one to focus on. If you tell your story with the historical event in the backdrop, what new perspective might you gain?
Sentence Study
After a murmuration of birds accompanied the giraffes for a couple hours of their journey, Woody reflects on the term extinction:
“In the years to come, as the war took over the world and the prospect of going extinct ourselves, by our own hands, became a thing we were forced to ponder, I’d find myself thinking back to that moment of the vanishing murmur, feeling a soul-weary loss beyond explaining.”
Rutledge opens her story with a double frame. The first layer is a brief third-person opening from a long-term care aide. The second layer is Woody’s present tense experience at age 105. The main narrative takes place in 1938, but Rutledge constructs Woody’s voice to remind us that these are reconstructed memories. In this sentence, both the phrase “In the years to come” and the clause “I’d find myself thinking” lift us out of the 1938 storyline. They widen the scope of the story and make it clear that this book is more than an “inspired by a true story” sort of novel.
This is a sort of hybrid periodic-cumulative sentence. The main clause is “I’d find myself.” In a periodic sentence, the main clause is delayed until the end. In a cumulative sentence, the main clause appears upfront and is trailed by modifying phrases and clauses. Placing the main clause in the middle lends this sentence a sort of balance that I think mimics the peace Woody finds when he remembers the moment. Imagine this sentence is stretched out on a single line, like an algebra equation, with “I’d find myself” in the middle like an equal sign. On the left side is a list of worries; on the right side is a description of what Woody does to deal with the worry. I find the structure both beautiful and poignant because it adds another layer of depth to the sentence.
