West with Giraffes by Lynda Routledge is a novel based on one those strange and idiosyncratic true stories that came out of the desperation for uplifting stories during the Great Depression which wreaked havoc around the world in the 1930’s. The origin story of this novel begins many decades later and what is already becoming several decades ago—the 1990’s—when Routledge was, using her own terminology, conducting a deep drive into the archives of the legendary San Diego Zoo looking for fodder for a new project. One random stumble across newspaper articles turned yellow by the march of time later and the author’s imagination was fired up and stoked.
Those newspaper clippings dated back to the late stage of the Depression era, just before it transitioned into the World War II era, 1938. The newspapers told of the unlikely story of two giraffes which had miraculously managed to survive the thrashing of hurricane winds and were schedule to make the perhaps equally difficult journey from New Jersey to California in what Routledge describes as a vehicle that was not much more than aa “tricked-out pickup.”
While the end of the Depression seemed to be just around the corner, its misery had create a cottage industry of such stories designed both to distract and uplift. By the time the unbelievable journey had been completed, more than 500 newspapers across the country were regularly updating readers on a fate for two exotic animals that most Americans at that time had never seen themselves that was anything but certain.
Readers interested in finding out more about the actual writing process—as well as the historical facts of the journey—are strongly encouraged to visit the author’s website which features a collection of fascinating background documents and—perhaps most fascinating—the author’s own highly detailed whiteboard outline for that new and exciting project which would finally be published in February 2021, more than two decades after the author’s odyssey began.
