“Few true friends have I known and two were giraffes…” sets the tone for the historical, adventurous, and powerful best-selling novel West with Giraffes by Lynda Rutledge. She was delighted when Coronado selected West with Giraffes for their city-wide Community Read and asked her to give a presentation, which was well attended at the Coronado Public Library on April 7. She was elated at this first in-person event, since the book came out in February 2021 and she was disappointed when unable to have a launch party due to the pandemic. She noted that six other venues have also selected this phenomenal book, and she has done numerous Zoom presentations.
Readers all over the world have greatly benefited from the lucky accident that occurred in 1999, when Rutledge found some ancient, yellowed scrapbooks chronicling the giraffes’ journey to the San Diego Zoo, while researching another project. She was enamored with the story and couldn’t let it go. She recalls, “I thought the story was ridiculously amazing, and I searched for the zookeeper’s diary, but didn’t find one.”
Fast forward 12 years to 2012, when the SD Zoo hired her to write a centennial book on visionary zoo director Charles Schroeder. She came to San Diego every few months until she completed the two-volume coffee table book entitled Mr. Zoo. During the intense writing process she needed to have some fun and decided to begin researching the giraffe story. It took her a year to complete the outline on a white board for the 12-day cross country trip the giraffes took after arriving in New York from Africa. She laughs as she says, “My white board shows the craziness of the writer’s mind.”
She set up the story with inciting action, then moved to rising action, next on to emotional climax and then technical climax, as the characters’ stories unfold while the caravan traversed the U.S., moving west from New York to California. While the basic story, which opens with a hurricane, is true, she had to fill in a lot of the gaps but kept it close to the news stories she could find.
Because she wanted to include information about the sixth extinction, she set the narrator up as Woodrow Wilson Nickel, in 2025, looking back on his life, from the beginning of the giraffes’ journey in 1938. She is often asked how she comes up with names, and in the narrator’s case she knew that many families in that era named their children after presidents, but she added Nickel, with the thought that his name would be Woody Nickel and she could sneak in the line “Don’t take any wooden nickels.” Cleverly, she took it further when she made him 105 years old, to be a century and a nickel, and he proudly proclaims, “I’m older than dirt.”
Rutledge had to grasp what it was like to live during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl, with the physical problems and racial situations, to create realistic characters. As a travel writer she loved the idea of a road trip. “It was fun to come up with everyone’s secret during the journey,” she recalls.
Her working title was “Driving the Hurricane Giraffes,” which her publisher was not crazy about and asked her to rethink it or they would choose one. Knowing she had to find the perfect title, she studied her bookcase at home and when her eyes landed on West with the Night, she knew what the title would be, and the publisher ultimately agreed. Her original manuscript was 110,000 words and she was told to cut 10,000. Not wanting to lose any of the adventures, she dug into her copy editing skills, methodically paring it down with no crucial sacrifices. She notes that “a first draft just gets the story down, but the second draft is more fun, as you start painting with words.”
I learned more about the exuberant storyteller behind this enriching book when we spent a delightful afternoon tooling around the village in my golf cart chatting. An extrovert, Rutledge shares that writing brings her joy as she becomes immersed in each of her stories, and then misses them when she is finished. Starting fiction-writing late in life has given her the advantage of life experiences and maturity, with a better world view and voice. She knew people loved giraffes, but she has found the depth of their affection incredible. When I asked the standard question about her writing process, she replied, “I can’t tell you that I sit down and write so many words a day. If it feels like work, then I can’t do it. If it feels like play, I can’t keep away from it.”
When she writes, she thinks, “If I’m entertained, I hope readers will be too.” After oodles of research, she says that she begins to hear the character’s dialogue. Once they can talk, she knows they are ready. This book resonated with me, and while reading it I would regale my husband with which state the giraffes were passing through, and I lamented the end of the journey. Since she spent so much time writing for the SD Zoo, I asked about her favorite animals. “The serenity of giraffes makes me happy, and I also have a special affinity for elephants and Galapagos turtles.” She shared that her favorite place in the world is the next place she goes, after the long pandemic hiatus.
As a child, she fondly remembers reading The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and the orange and blue children’s biographies which many people may recall from their childhood. She moved on to Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird in later years. Growing up as a tomboy, she set her sights on becoming the first female shortstop for the Yankees, then tried her hand at art. She holds an MFA in creative writing, and an MA in American literature, and has won numerous awards. Taking a creative writing class near the end of college showed her that writing is a craft to which you have to apply imagination. She discovered she could be an artist with words. For more than 25 years, she has worked in various writing arenas, including as a freelance journalist, nonfiction writer, ghost writer, copywriter, book collaborator, restaurant and film reviewer, and her favorite, as a travel writer, where she got paid to see the world.
Coronado holds a special place in her heart because when she lived in San Diego for 18 months, and in subsequent visits for work at the zoo, she often crossed the bridge to enjoy our town and its beaches. The popularity of this book makes her feel validated that her initial intuition that this story was a must-tell winner, was right. West with Giraffes has already been translated into 12 languages. She hints that there have been nibbles at film rights (and my book club and I would be first in line to see the movie).
The Coronado audience on April 7 thought West with Giraffes was a great blend of history and storytelling and wanted the inside scoop on her next book, which Rutledge says is in the proposal phase. Secrets she shared about her upcoming novel, due out in 2024, include that it will be semi-autobiographical, set in 1964, in a small railroad town in Texas, and speak of hope for great potential. Readers can expect a baseball game, a pastor feud, a sit-in, and friendship that defies the norms of the time. The library, which had a huge impact on her life growing up, will also play a role. She highlighted that it will be a more intimate story, similar to her first book Faith Bass Darling’s Garage Sale, which was published in 2012, and made into a French film.
“There is nothing more joyful than creating a world I can live in for a while and then share with others,” she concludes, categorizing her books as serious topics written in a playful manner, that hopefully make readers celebrate life. I wonder if a white board will be appearing in her home in Texas for research and development of her new book?
For more details, visit www.lyndarutledge.com.
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