West With Giraffes (2021) by Lynda Rutledge was a book club pick, and I’m so glad that it was. It’s based on the true story of two giraffes that arrived in New York City in 1939 after a hurricane, and were driven by truck across the United States, before interstate highways, to the San Diego Zoo.
The main narrator is Woody, an centenarian veteran, who is hallucinating a giraffe in his nursing home window, and is desperately writing down his story for someone. Woody was 17 in 1939, an orphan who had ridden the rails from the Texas panhandle to New York to find work in the shipyard but is also caught in the hurricane. When he comes to in the rubble, he sees the giraffes being offloaded from a boat that has just docked from Africa, and he is fascinated.
With the audacity of a 17-year old white boy who has already lost everything, he steals a motorcycle and follows the truck carrying the giraffes. Staying nearby, but not close enough to get caught, he meets them late at night and is at the scene when he is offered a job driving them when a driver is needed. Riley Jones, who Woody calls the “Old Man” was hired by Belle Benchley (the real-life director of the San Diego Zoo) to bring the giraffes cross-country, but he has a bad hand and can’t drive. Riley sees that Woody has an affinity for animals, and decides to give him a chance and drive south to Washington, DC, where the southern route cross-country begins.
Meanwhile, a young, red-haired woman in a green Packard is also following the giraffes. She’s a photographer, planning to submit her work to Life magazine after the giraffes arrive in San Diego. She’s not much older than Woody, and at night, while the Old Man is sleeping, Woody lets her spend time meeting the giraffes as well, and they become friends, although Woody falls in love with her.
It’s a great adventure story, as they cross the country, braving mountains, and floods, crossing paths with a traveling circus and meeting people both good-hearted and malicious. They have mechanical problems and Woody has to reckon with his past, as the route goes right through the Texas panhandle. Rutledge’s writing is beautiful, and full of wisdom, and the chapters are interspersed with newspaper articles and telegrams, and pan forward to Woody’s current circumstances in the nursing home as he valiantly records his story.
I absolutely loved it! I also consider it weight-neutral for the most part, as there was little description of body size, except for an occasional description of someone as “slim”, “big-boned”, or “potbellied”. These descriptions were mostly neutral, except for the circus master, who was a despicable character and described as a fat man. Rutledge did not, however, overdo descriptions of his fatness and so I think it’s mostly a neutral description.
Reading While Fat 