AUGUST 2023 READING
West with Giraffes: A Novel
by Lynda Rutledge
published 2021,
Lake Union Publishing
372 pp (hardcover)
ISBN-13 (hardcover): 9781542021746
Book Club Meeting
August 29, 2023, 7:00 PM
Hosted by: Colleen McClenahan
Snack provided by: Sara
Wine provided by: Colleen McClenahan, Pat Finnerty
Book selected by: Sara Ashman
Accessibility
Book
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Fingerlakes Library System
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NY Public Library
Book on CD
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Fingerlakes Library System
E-book
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Amazon Kindle (purchase)
Audible
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Amazon (purchase)
About Lynda Rutledge
"A fifth generation Texan, Lynda has hopped across literary and geographic boundaries in her writing career. She's been a freelance journalist, travel writer, ghostwriter, restaurant and film reviewer, copywriter, college professor, book collaborator, and nonfiction author while living/writing/studying in Chicago, San Diego, New Orleans, Madrid, and lots of other heres and theres around the globe.
As a freelance journalist, she's petted baby rhinos, snorkeled with endangered sea turtles, hang-glided off a small Swiss mountain, dodged hurricanes, and interviewed the famous and not-so-famous to write dozens of articles for national and international magazines, newspapers and travel guides, her travel photographs often appearing with her work.
She's also crafted collaborative book-length nonfiction with people from all walks of life as well as a list of special charities and organizations such as the San Diego Zoo and Wild Animal Park for which she's shown below doing an interview.
Her creative writing, though, has always been the love of her writing life and the stuff of her literary dreams. She holds an MFA from the University of New Orleans and has won awards and residencies from the Illinois Arts Council, Writers League of Texas, Ragdale Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and Squaw Valley Community of Writers as well as juried attendance to Sewanee Writers Conference among others.
Currently, she is behaving herself in front of her computer screen in the hill country outside Austin, pursuing those pesky literary pretensions as she enjoys her debut novel with Putnam's Amy Einhorn Books."
West with Giraffes: A Novel
Book review: Inspiring coming-of-age story based on real events
"When 17-year-old Woodrow Wilson Nickel buried the last of his family, he struck out from his Texas panhandle home to find his cousin in New York City. It was 1938, the Great Depression had taken hope from the nation and if that wasn't bad enough, the Dust Bowl era added to the despair.
Now at the age of 105, Woody is in a VA center where he has become aware of the near extinction of so much wildlife because of the ever-increasing human population taking over their habitat. This includes giraffes, which so much of his growing up depended on. He begins to write a journal of an eventful trip he took with a young pair so many decades ago.
Lynda Rutledge has delivered a wonderful, bittersweet coming-of-age novel designed to celebrate hope in a hopeless world. “West With Giraffes” is an unforgettable novel of adventure, unrequited love, and the spirit of America during the bleakest period of its existence.
Belle Benchley, the first-ever female zoo director who runs the San Diego Zoo, has managed to procure two giraffes and a rhino from Africa. As the transport ship neared New York City a disastrous hurricane nearly sinks it, and the rhino is lost. The giraffes survive and are quarantined before the long trek to California.
Woody manages to procure the job of driving the truck along with Benchley's right-hand man, Riley Jones. Although only 17 and unfamiliar with driving a truck, he manages to impress Jones.
Augusta Lowe, a beautiful redhead with dreams of becoming a photojournalist for Life magazine, begins shadowing the giraffes and their transporters. America's love affair with the animals is a welcome distraction from the events of the times.
This is a beautifully written novel that has everything in it. Intrigue, guilt, desperation, redemption and a pair of the most wonderful giraffes to ever be documented.
The truly inspiring part of this book is that it is based on true events. Some names have been changed and the story is invented by Rutledge, but it reads like a true biography.
Every year I find at least one book that soars above all the others. This year “West With Giraffes” is that book."
Review by Richard Klinzman for the Jacksonville Florida Times-Union USA TODAY NETWORK
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