Who knew a story about giraffes could stir up such feeling? But this novel is as much about friendship, love, forgiveness, adventure, and humanity as it is about giraffes. Notably, how animals and humans are interconnected. It's also a stirring snapshot in time of our nation's history caught between the Great Depression and the second world war. Based on true events, this book relates the transport of two giraffes across the country from New York Harbor to the San Diego Zoo, and how it transfixed our nation.
Two African giraffes wash ashore during the Great Hurricane of 1938. The first to hit the upper East Coast in over a century, seven hundred people were killed. It was the most destructive hurricane until Sandy in 2012. Travelling in crates aboard a merchant marine ship, the animals arrive miraculously alive and (mostly) unharmed.
Woody Nickel, a seventeen-year-old orphaned by the Dust Bowl in the panhandle of Texas and relocated to New York to work for a distant cousin, becomes fascinated by the sight of the animals. Hungry, poor, and desperate to get away from his unkind cousin, Woody follows the giraffes until he insinuates himself into being the driver of the rig that gets them to California. Riley Jones, whom Woody refers to as "the Old Man" is the zoo escort in charge of the task. A young woman, whom Woody refers to as "Red", follows them across the U.S. in her green Packard, intent on documenting the trip with her camera and publishing in Life magazine.
Encountering mountains, scoundrels, thieves, low underpasses, and a heart-stopping flash flood in Texas, their trek across the Lee highway is remarkable. One can just picture how necks would crane and imaginations would soar at the sight of the exotic animals passing.
Riley tells Woody that predators use claws and prey use hooves. It becomes clear to the small crew that the giraffes, whom they call Girl and Boy, are prey as they get kicked repeatedly when caring for Girl's injured leg. However, this doesn't stop the humans from falling in love with the gentle giants. Woody, Riley and Red feel their hearts swell as they witness the giraffes' soulful humming and watch them curl up to sleep together. Fond of apples and onions, the giraffes instill a sense of calm and peacefulness in the travelers. The group passes by the natural beauty and dangers of our country's landscape as well as evidence of the Hard Times, such as Hoboes and Hoovervilles, in their cross-country trip.
As Woody ponders late in the story, "on such small things, entire lives turn"; the two-week trip is transformative to young Woody. He relates as an old man in a nursing home that he often reflected back upon that time during his years in the war - and thereafter over his century-long life. He says about Riley and Red, "It's a strange thing how you can spend years with some folks and never know them, yet with others you only need a handful of days to know them far beyond years." Maybe this is also true with certain animals. Woody's farmer father used to tell him, "They're only animals". Many of us know this isn't true. And as the author writes in her notes at the end of the book, those animals lightened the loads of an entire country.
Belle Benchley was San Diego's zookeeper at the time - the first woman zookeeper in the world. She famously wrote in her book on conservation that the only way people will care about nature's wild animals is to meet them. This belief holds true for the book's memorable characters and for this reader as I grew to love the giraffes through this story. I give this wonderful work of historical fiction five stars out of five.
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