West with Giraffes

A Novel

Paperback, 371 pages

Published Feb. 1, 2021 by Lake Union Publishing.

ISBN:
978-1-5420-2334-4
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(2 reviews)

“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, …

4 editions

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

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 …

Review of 'West with Giraffes' on 'Goodreads'

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 …