WEST with GIRAFFES-Historic Fiction-Old Fashioned Story Telling that Feels Stifling

Lynda Rutledge's novel is part coming of age story set during the era of the Great Dust Bowl based on the true story of the first giraffes to be transported from Africa across the Atlantic and then transported to San Diego across country. Rutledge's research mirrors very closely the epic journey cross the US continent to the San Diego Zoo. There's many moving parts to this tall tale written in the style of a dated black/white movie depicting the fallouts from both the Great Dust Bowl and Great Depression. Furthermore, there is the interesting historical figure, Belle Benchley, the first female zoo director in the world who oversaw the entire operation for 26 years becoming known for advocating for the protection of wildlife. Despite the extraordinary elements from an epoch in our nation's history, the novel's archaic storytelling is so arid and musty it's not worth the time spent reading. Woodrow Wilson, "Woody" is the novel's protagonist whose  parents and younger sister both perish on their dried up farm in TX leaving him orphaned and nearly penniless. He takes to the rails like many other hobos scrounging to find work, food and shelter. Woody went from the Great Dust Bowl into the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 which impacted the ship carrying the pair of giraffes purchased for the zoo. So many great disasters to fabricate a fascinating story and Rutledge panders her material with Woody's cheesy infatuation with a red headed older woman and his abject alliance to the "old man" who unwillingly resigns to hiring him to help drive the truck transporting the two giraffes. The saga which takes them through the segregated south, and through the ravaged countryside. Unfortunately, Rutledge reduces the novel to a rudimentary yarn with stock stereotypes of your grumpy old man with a soft heart and a wild redheaded ingenue with a sickly heart who wants to have one last adventure. Woody's woes are alluded to and the revealed admission to the old man is a mawkish payoff of regret for a tragedy not of his making. What I did find refreshing were the interactions between the giraffes and their givers. The exotic creatures were endearing and their welfare was the heart of the novel that never embraced the essence of what Belle Benchley or someone like Jane Goodall have dedicated their lives to. The novel is structured around Woody urgently writing his memoir to be a lasting vestige of his great love for the giraffes and his unrequited love from Red. I didn't care for what I read. Instead, this reads like an old fashioned B western movie with stereotypical tropes of Hillbilly Hicks and a lovesick lad.  Even with all the great historic makings, it was just bad.