The Best Books Club Column: "West With Giraffes," by Lynda Rutledge

Photo by Drew Coffman

I’m going to share a little secret with you: Don’t tell anyone, but a few months ago, I realized I had — gasp! — lost my love for reading.

Shocking, isn’t it? I mean, reading had always been my favorite hobby. I’d been happily reading four to seven books a week for more decades than I care to admit, I chose to major in English as an undergraduate and to earn a Master’s degree in English, I spent several decades trying to persuade students in my English classes to love reading as much as I did, and I write a column based on reading books. I couldn’t just lose my love for reading, for goodness sake!

Yet, I had.

There was no time to waste. With a column deadline looming, I had to choose a good book, read it — sigh — and write about it. Days passed, and I was beginning to despair when I overheard two ladies at a local café chatting about a book they had both read and thoroughly enjoyed.

As I continued to listen to their enthusiastic discussion — a.k.a. eavesdrop on their conversation — I simultaneously purchased and downloaded the book onto my iPad.

Two minutes later, I was reading “West With Giraffes” (2021), and within just a couple of pages, I was hooked. Lynda Rutledge’s novel opens in September 1938 and is loosely based on actual events. World War I was only 20 years past, and Americans were struggling to survive the Great Depression while warily watching Hitler maneuver through Europe.

On Sept. 23, a ship from present-day Kenya arrived after barely surviving what was until then the most devastating hurricane to ever hit the upper East Coast. Aboard that ship were two young Ugandan giraffes, one of them seriously injured in the storm. The ship’s crew unloaded the two young giraffes and handed them off to San Diego Zoo head keeper Charley Smith — “Old Man” in the novel — who was determined to transport them in a crate on a dilapidated truck across the length of the U.S. to the San Diego Zoo.

Rutledge combines that 12-day mad dash across the country — on roads totally unlike those we traverse today — with a totally inexperienced teenage truck driver on the run from the law, an enigmatic head keeper, a crooked villain or two, a run-away wife, a touch of teenage — and innocent — romantic desire and much more to create a rollicking adventure.

“West With Giraffes” was, as my grandpa would say, just the tonic I needed to recapture my love for reading. Every time I opened the book and slipped into the captivating world of Boy and Girl and the lives of Old Man and Woody Nickel — corny name, but I love it — I left behind my own.

That’s what hobbies and pastimes do. For a time, at least, they take us out of our daily routines, giving us respite from the small blips and even, thank goodness, from larger trials. They allow us the time we need to be refreshed and restored. They grant us the space to create and to enjoy something different, something better.

I hope in the coming weeks, you make the time to revisit old hobbies, maybe even one you have seemingly lost interest in. Leave behind the world around you and shake loose any weariness that weighs you down. Let the tonic of hobbies and pastimes restore and rejuvenate you.

We’ll consider these and other thoughts during our Facebook Live at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 5:

1. Woody and Red, although close in age, live what seems to be very different lives. Are their lives actually all that different? Explain.

2. At the beginning of the novel, Woody looks for a way to get to California. Why?

3. The relationship between Old Man and Woody is an intriguing one. What do the two very different men learn from each other?

4. Red has a bucket list. Do you have a similar list? How is it like or unlike Red’s?

5. Of the various characters in “West With Giraffes,” who would you most like to meet and why?

Coming Up

Our September selection is a book I first read when it was published in 2012, the first in a series of — to date — 17 books featuring a beautiful autistic investigator, murder, forged art, an international art thief and much, much more. “The Gauguin Connection” by bestselling author Estelle Ryan is available through Missouri Evergreen and Libby — both through the Cape Girardeau Public Library — and through local and online booksellers. It is available in hard copy and as both an ebook and an audio book.

Patti Miinch, a resident of Cape Girardeau, is an author, mother and mother-in-law of two, grandmother of five and retired educator; while she has many loves, spending time with her family, sports, travel and reading top the list.