West with Giraffes

 By Lynda Rutledge

Lake Union     2021

356 pages     Historical Fiction

Woodrow Wilson Nickel (or Woody Nickel as he is called) is a very old man in a nursing home who has a story that he has to get told before he dies. And what a story it is!

When he was a teenager, a victim of the Dust Bowl era in the Texas Panhandle, Woody attempts to travel to New York to meet his cousin, his only living relative, but the cousin can’t be found once Woody gets to the city. While in New York, he witnesses an historical event so bizarre, his whole life is changed. A pair of giraffes, on their way to be the first giraffes at the San Diego Zoo, miraculously survive a hurricane while they are crossing the Atlantic. Absolutely fascinated by the experience of seeing the giraffes, Woody decides to follow the truck to California.

A series of circumstances finds him driving the truck across the country for the zookeeper--the “old man “-- across the country. What follows is one of the craziest journeys ever—every moment compelling and dramatic. Some of the events are historically accurate, and some come from the mind of Lynda Rutledge, the author. But as the reader goes West with Giraffes, we are led to imagine what the real trip was like. Throughout the journey, Woody, the boy, becomes Woody, the man. He learns to care for the giraffes, learns to appreciate the old man, and falls in love with a young photographer who is following the truck.

Rutledge backs up her crazy story with newspaper articles that appeared during the actual trip as well as the wired messages the old man sent to Belle Jennings Benchley, the head zookeeper at the San Diego Zoo. And Benchley is one of the incredible factual characters in the story. She was the first female zookeeper in the country, and she was responsible for making the San Diego Zoo one of the most famous zoos in the world. Rutledge says that she first came across the story when she was in the zoo’s archives working on another story. Apparently the story of the giraffes' cross country trip made the newspapers across the country every day of their 12-day trip, and Rutledge’s imagination took hold as she was reading the newspaper accounts. The result of her imagination is West with Giraffes. And by the way, I found this picture of the actual truck and giraffes. This trip really did happen!

Rutledge tells the story beautifully—which is an important asset to the book, because it would be easy to get bogged down in the details of a 12-day trip. We are able to see Woody maturing before our eyes, at the same time that we witness all the dangers the truck and the giraffes are experiencing. One of my favorite moments in the book happens while in the desert. Woody and the old man look up to see that they are being followed by a flock of birds and both men and giraffes are struck by the magic of that moment—remarkable in its peacefulness. A meant-to-be moment.

This is my book club’s reading for the month. I would not have picked it out on my own, and I am very grateful for the choice. I can’t wait to ask my friend how she heard about the book and to discuss it Thursday night with my book club.  

Lynda Rutledge website. By the way, Rutledge has a new book coming out in January, Mockingbird Summer. It is another historical fiction book taking place in 1964. Wait? Is it possible that 1964 could be history? Makes me feel like old man Woody.

Murder Ballads Old & New

 By Stephen L. Jones

Feral House     2023

224 pages     Music History

Here is the book’s description. “Murder Ballads Old & New: A Dark and Bloody Record is an exploration of an age-old topic— our human need to document the horrors of the world around us.  The murder ballad, here expanded to include songs about traumatic loss in modern variants and multiple styles, including punk, post-punk, alt-country, and folk. The book is a graveyard stroll past tombs both well-kept and half-hidden. Murder Ballads Old & New excavates facts about killers, victims, and the folkloric storytellers who disseminated their tales in song.

Author Steven L. Jones focuses the tragic ballad as “an act of remembering and a soul-reckoning with the ineffable.” Songs examined range from obscure tunes from the founding days of the United States to familiar canonical songs learned in schoolrooms and honkytonks. Jones tackles each song in a manner that’s equal parts musicological, psychosocial, and genealogical as he uncovers stories that reveal larger contexts and maps the lineages of songs and themes, forebears, and ancestors. Murder Ballads Old & New includes a wide range of songs and performers from the relatively unknown (Boiled in Lead, Freakons, Nelstone’s Hawaiians) to the ironically famous (Johnny Cash, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth). Highlights include tales of Muddy Waters guitar sideman Pat Hare, whose incendiary blues boast “I’m Gonna Murder My Baby” proved grimly prophetic. And honky-tonk pioneer Eddie Noack, whose morbid stab at late-career rebirth, “Psycho,” couldn’t match the bottomless tragedy of his own life.  As well as Depression-era holdup man Pretty Boy Floyd, Schubert’s mythical Erlkönig, and the Manson Family.”

Although I did not read the entire book, the introduction was very informative. And then, I read specifically about two songs: Lou Reed’s The Day John Kennedy Died and Desolation Row by Bob Dylan. I was particularly interested in Desolation Row because Dylan wrote it about a lynching in his father’s hometown, Duluth, which is my home town. Dylan grew up in Hibbing MN, but his father was a young boy in Duluth when three circus workers were lynched. I found it a fascinating example of history preserved in music.

Murder Ballads Old and New is a very dense, quite scholarly book, but music lovers will very much appreciate it. This copy is going to my musician brother. It came to me from the publisher, and it is on the market this week.

Here are YouTube versions about both songs: Lou Reed The Day John Kennedy Died and Bob Dylan  Desolation Row.

Life After God

By Mark Feldmeir

Westminster John Knox     2023

220 pages     Spiritual Growth

Here is the publisher’s summary of the book. “The understanding of God that many Christians insist is so clear in the Bible makes faith seem like an all-or-nothing proposition. When much of that rigid projection seems in doubt, it’s not surprising that many people leave behind this take-it-or-leave-it religion. Pastor Mark Feldmeir offers an introduction to a God that many people weren’t aware existed—a mysterious, uncontainable, still-active God who loves and cares for real people with real problems. Life after God offers glimpses of the ineffable God, who can emerge when we forget what we think we’re supposed to believe about God and open us up to the mystery, wonder, and compelling love we crave.”

Last night, a young woman close to my family called me for some help. She has had 4 or 5 deaths in her family within the past year, including her mother. In the course of the conversation, she asked me, “Do you think God is mad at me?” Thank goodness I had just read Rev. Mark Feldmeir’s book because I was able to answer her with some truths, rather than some platitudes or a wake-up call to pray for forgiveness for wrongs she may have committed. Feldmeir’s truth helped me to tell her that what God was offering was strength to carry through during the times when life seemed overwhelming.

The subtitle of the book is “Finding faith when you can’t believe anymore.” Feldmeir explores the Biblical concept of God, traditional evangelical views of God, and a more cognitive awareness of the presence of a loving, trusting, and supportive God. The text is written in almost a prose poem style, or perhaps sermon style. It is very easy to read and digest. And, more importantly, it is encouraging and supportive.

It is a perfect book for those who are struggling with their faith, and those who wonder about why we are believing in a God at all. For me, it put into words the faith in a God whose arms are wrapped around me and supporting me.

Life After God is composed in a way that allows the reader to get through the book in a couple of sittings or to do as I did, read one section a night as my evening meditation. I have suggested the book for my spiritual growth book group at church, when I will read it again. I also think that it would do well as a 6-or-8 week study because there are study questions at the end of the book.

Mark Feldmeir is the pastor of St. Andrew United Methodist Church in Highland Park, Colorado. I identified so well with the book, it makes me want to visit the church sometime.

Killers of the Flower Moon

By David Grann

Vintage Books    2017

377 pages     History

The subtitle is: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI. In anticipation of seeing the movie Killers of the Flower Moon this week, I decided to read the historical book of the same name by David Grann. The book is the horrific study of a time in American history when white men chose to steal the money and the lives of members of the Osage tribe of native peoples in Oklahoma.

In the early 20^th century, the Osage were pushed out of Kansas into what appeared to be sterile and unoccupied land in Oklahoma. After suffering for several years, the tribe discovered that the land they had been forced to settle was rich in oil, and the tribe became very rich—rich enough that they exposed themselves to the greed and avarice of white America.

Grann tells the stories of several families who became so wealthy that most of them had to have appointed white guardians to watch over them and determine how their money would be spent. After a few years, natives, both women and men, went missing, were found dead, or died of poisoning at alarming rates. Federal officials were called in to solve the murders, and the young J. Edgar Hoover was delegated to solve the mysteries. Thus the beginning of the FBI.

It is history told in great detail with a huge number of characters, all very well drawn. Sometimes, I felt that there were too many characters, but I kept reading and trying to keep it all straight. Tom White, a former Texas Ranger, put together an undercover team that, along with Osage help, began to “expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American History.” The reader tries to keep up with the details.

The most interesting part of the book to me was when the author David Grann tells the story of how he began to do the research for the book, including interviewing descendants of the people massacred. By doing so, he found evidence of crimes and conspiracies that were never discovered by Hoover’s men, 90 years previously. The reviewer on the Book Forum concludes, “Remarkably he succeeds. But there’s nothing triumphant or Agatha Christie-like about the end result. What we’re left with, instead, are circles of complicity that widen and widen until, terrifyingly, they grow to encompass the reader as well.”

I am very much looking forward to seeing the movie later this week. My thinking is that the many names in the book will be easier to identify when we are looking at visuals, rather than reading the names. Hoping.

Additionally, I have an unsolved question in my own life. My great aunt Helma taught American history in Tulsa Oklahoma in the 1940s and 1950s. Did she know about this part of Oklahoma history, or the part about the murders in Tulsa’s Black Wall Street? I know we will never know the answer. My guess is that both of those horrific times were never discussed and she never taught them.  

 David Grann website.

Another review of the book in the New York Times by Dave Eggers.