Lynda Rutledge

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 Wilson Nickel. Present day: At 105, Woody feels his life ebbing away. When he learns giraffes are going extinct, he finds himself recalling an experience he cannot take to his grave. In retelling his story, he explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals, the kindness of strangers, and the passing of time. -- adapted from jacket

A Novel

West with Giraffes

Emily

You can't just come out with these banger quotes 😭

Somehow, though, I know there is still you. And there is still this story that’s yours as good as mine. If it goes extinct, too, with my old bag of bones, that’d be a crying shame—my shame. Because if ever I could claim to have seen the face of God, it was in the colossal faces of those giraffes. And if ever I should be leaving something behind, it’s this story for them and for you.

The boathouse where I’d been standing had blown away along with Cuz, my third-cousin boss. Found him in a shallow pool of boat shards, a sloop’s mast stuck straight through him.

whenever I locked eyes with an animal I felt something more soulful than I ever felt from the humans I knew, and what I saw in that sprawled giraffe’s eye made me ache to the bone.

Cassandra Tang

But if you really want to know, it always seemed wrong to think an animal’s life isn’t worth as much as a human’s. Life is life.

This world of misery is in dire need of some natural wonder to learn secrets to life from.

Home’s not the place you’re from, Woody. Home’s the place you want to be.

West with Giraffes quotes

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