I can see why lots of Bookclubs and readers have loved this book. It is an interesting historical fiction story based on this news story:

“In September 1938, on the orders of the zoo’s famous female director, Belle Benchley, two young giraffes survived a hurricane at sea, then were driven cross-country for twelve days in little more than a tricked-out pickup truck to become the first giraffes in Southern California. While the giraffes saw the USA from their sky-high windows, over five hundred newspapers carried the story day after day to their readers’ delight.” 
- from author’s note 

The book follows this premise across the country, on famous highways (The Lincoln Highway, also the title of a recent book that was popular), across the country. I loved the journey through Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle (my home area). A lot of popular topics of the time are discussed, World Wars, the Dust Bowl (which my grandmother remembers and talks about), circuses like Barnum and Bailey, sundown towns (reminded me of The Warmth of Sunshine), etc.

The story got a little slogged down to me at times, but I was glad I got to read it with Amazon Prime.

“Did you know giraffes in the wild only live about twenty-five years at the most? Their hearts give out too quick, I guess, pumping up and down that neck.” Ch 8
(This also has a fiery red head who has a heart condition who wants to be a National Geographic photographer and follows along the journey taking photos). 

“I would begin to grasp not only the first stink of my waffling young soul but also that destiny is a mobile thing—that every choice you make, along with every choice made around you, can cause it to spin this way and that, offering destinies galore.” Ch 9

“Home’s not the place you’re from, Woody. Home’s the place you want to be.” Ch 10

“The land you grow up in is a forever thing, remembered when all else is forgotten, whether it did you right or did you wrong.” Ch 11

“But at least you know the ground rules with animals. You can count the cost of breaking the rules. You never know with people. Even the good can hurt you bad, and the bad, well, they’re going to hurt you but good.” Ch 13

“Do you know what I like best about photographs?” “What?” I said. “They stop time.”
…
“The thing about knowing you’re doing something for the last time is that it takes the joy right out of it.” Ch 14

“In the years ahead, through the War and beyond, it was this quiet day moving through the unmoving land with Boy and Girl and the Old Man and Red that I returned to when I needed it most.” Ch 14

“On such small things, entire lives turn.” Ch 15

Ch 16
“…that there’s no explaining the world, where you find yourself in it and who your friends turn out to be.”

“Sometimes the best medicine is a good story.”

“Some things are so much yours, you just have to keep ’em to yourself.”

“It’s a strange thing how you can spend years with some folks and never know them, yet, with others, you only need a handful of days to know them far beyond years.”

“…and I marveled at the power of a soul’s truest story to staunch life’s cruelest ones. I could’ve lived my entire life in the shadow of Dust Bowl miseries and Hitler horrors. Instead such times held less pain because of two animals I once knew.”