My husband bought me two toy giraffes. I had admired these in the hardware store after I had finished reading the novel West with Giraffes. Surprising me, he said, “I guess you are in your Giraff-ic period. It follows your Llam-ic period.” He knows how to make me laugh.

Previously, I have been a bit obsessed with llamas. Although I still “llove llamas,” I have a newfound love for giraffes. I am smitten. And here’s why.

Nancy H. recommended this book. I have come to trust the recommendations of certain friends. They are like a rudder on a boat, steering me to discover books I would never come across otherwise. I mean, there’s a great ocean of books out there. In fact, so many books are published each year that unless 1. the author is well known, or 2. a huge marketing campaign launches a new book with media reviews, or 3. word of mouth carries the book far and wide on the winds of praise, most books slowly sink to the bottom of the sea.

Nancy H. recommended this book. I have come to trust the recommendations of certain friends. They are like a rudder on a boat, steering me to discover books I would never come across otherwise. I mean, there’s a great ocean of books out there. In fact, so many books are published each year that unless 1. the author is well known, or 2. a huge marketing campaign launches a new book with media reviews, or 3. word of mouth carries the book far and wide on the winds of praise, most books slowly sink to the bottom of the sea.

Genre of Books

The two main categories of books are fiction and non-fiction. While non-fiction purports to be true, basing arguments solely upon selected facts, fiction wraps a story around truth. Fiction uses people, ideas, and events that are equally true to life as the most fact and data-driven non-fiction book.

In either case, books offer the perspective of the writer, who bases ideas on observation, research, experiences, and arguments they wish to prove. Readers get to decide whether or not the writer succeeds in making his/her case.

More importantly though, does the book move the reader to care?

Whether fiction or non-fiction, all writing must resonate universal truth. The reader must somehow identify with whatever he reads, whether reading to gain information, reading for pleasure, reading to escape and be entertained, or reading to learn something about himself or the world in which all human beings live. Great books afford readers multiple experiences at the same time.

Fiction genres include: Fantasy; Science Fiction; Dystopian; Action and Adventure; Literary Fiction; Mystery; Cosy Mystery; Crime Mystery; Horror; Thriller and Suspense; and Historical Fiction, to name a few examples of many fiction genres [1]. In bookstores and libraries, fiction covers an entire section, and books are organized alphabetically by author.

“Writing fiction is the act of weaving a series of lies to arrive at a greater truth.”

— Khaled Hosseini

Non-fiction genres include: Autobiography and Memoir (first person stories told by the author him/herself); Biography chronicles the life of a well-known person and is written by someone other than that person; Art and Photography; History; Astronomy; Self Help; Travel; Humor; How-To Guides; Languages; Religion and Spirituality; Science and Math; Parenting; Fishing and Hunting Guides; Geography; Cooking. Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and essays are classified as non-fiction. And of course, the Bible.

Each main genre, fiction or non-fiction, can further divide into sub-genre, guiding a reader according to specific interest. Whether the writer, the publisher, or the retailer decides, non-fiction books get shelved all over the bookstore map, generally appealing to a reader’s desire either to learn something, learn how to do something, or know something.

Don’t neglect novels

West with Giraffes is a novel, written in the genre of historical fiction. Historical fiction combines actual historical events and settings with fictional characters the writer uses in order to tell an imaginative story. While the conversations, situations, and characters in a novel are made-up, these combine to carry meaning that relates to life.

As human beings, we are wired to respond to story. Reading a historical fiction novel engages me on a different level than science fiction or dystopian fantasy. Though in each genre, the writer uses imagination to transport the reader to the world he creates using words, historical fiction also connects readers to actual events that might otherwise remain unknown or forgotten.

Before reading West with Giraffes, I had not given any thought to zoo animals transportation across oceans and then across the country, much less to the hazards encountered or the pains endured by both the animals and the people responsible for their care. What makes this story so riveting is that the giraffes arrived in New York harbor during an historic hurricane that occurred in 1938.

America on the brink of war with Hitler, the Great Depression continued to displace, demoralize, and drain hope from millions of Americans worn down by economic hardships resulting from the Dust Bowl. These historic events add context.

The main character Woodrow Wilson Nickel is a 17-year-old boy from the Texas Panhandle who makes his way to New York in hopes that his cousin can give him a job. He and his cousin are caught with countless others in the deadly hurricane. Cuz is killed and an orphaned Woody now bone-thin, hungry, and destitute.

“Up the dock, a storm-clobbered freighter was unloading. I don’t remember getting to my feet or moving. I only remember standing in the middle of the freighter’s crew in their blue dungaree uniforms, staring. There, before me, were two giraffes under a dangling crane that had just unloaded them like a pack of tires. One was alive and swaying inside a cracked but upright crate, the colossal beast’s head thrusting up treetop tall, the other lifeless, sprawled across the entire width of the dock, its crate crushed around it like an accordion. Back then, nobody knew much about giraffes, but in the little schooling I had before the dust came, I’d seen a picture of one, so I was able to put a name to the wonder. Staring at the downed one, I was sure I was gazing at a real-life carcass of a real-dead giraffe . . . until the carcass opened a brown-apple eye to gaze up at me. . . .”

Those brown-apple eyes play a big role in the story. Two giraffes, “the Old Man” responsible to deliver the giraffes on a 12-day road trip to the San Diego Zoo, a homeless boy, and a redheaded photographer who followed their journey in a green Packard, are the main characters in this vividly told story.

Adventures and misadventures galore capture the taste and feel of hard times, hard luck, and hard won victories that have a way of bringing people together to achieve a common goal. The spirits of Americans everywhere lifted as they followed the progress of the two giraffe’s actual journey, chronicled and celebrated in newspapers. Newspaper excerpts are printed in the book.

Giraffes transported in a flatbed truck with a wooden contraption built to house the giraffes for their dangerous journey travel along the Lee Highway. In 1938, travel was hazardous: two-lane highway, portions unpaved; narrow bridges; low-clearance tunnels; winds, rains, floods. Worst of all, con artists, criminals, and desperate people in desperate times impede their journey.

Author Lynda Rutledge has written a story that exposes the frailty of life, “the grace of animals,” and the tender emotions evoked in those who make sacrifices that reveal their need to love and be loved.

Read it and weep. I did.

[1] https://blog.reedsy.com/book-genres/