West with Giraffes

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.

Westward with Giraffes is an historic novel, based on a well-researched, true event about a pair of giraffes who survived a hurricane at sea and then a road trip across the country, from New York City to San Diego, California. It is also a tumultuous coming of age story for one young man named Woodrow Wilson Nickel, or Woody Nickel for short. The year is 1938, a time when this country is still recovering from The Great Depression and Hitler is threatening war in Europe.

Woody, all of seventeen years old, has already suffered loss and trauma, but we the readers never get a sense of exactly what Woody has lost: I’d like to know more about his time with his mother and sister. Were there any good times at all, bittersweet memories of life before the dust bowl?

Also, the story is supposed to be told by Woody when he is aged 105, written in longhand by pencil. That might be too much for me to picture, but it’s not a huge point. And if I wasn’t completely comfortable with the writing style, perhaps it’s because an old man wrote it, in a hurry, before dying.

And once again, Woody is all alone. To whom is he writing this long missive? We don’t learn that until the end, and it’s yet another tragedy that he never gets to know its effect. Woody has multiple people in his memories, but has had precious few moments with them, or so it would seem, since there is very little information about what happens during his life between WWII and the present.

Woody Nickel certainly has his adventures driving a rig hauling two giraffes long distance, beside his employer, an old man in a fedora who loves animals and tall tales. There is also a mysterious young woman, nicknamed Red, who is determined to follow them with her camera and dreams of being a photographer for Life Magazine. They get into some precarious positions, but are always lucky enough to survive them.

This was an easy, interesting novel to read, though somehow I didn’t find it moving. There were aspects about driving across country during that time period that were an education, and I am glad to have read this.