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Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream, by Carson Vaughan
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Review
“In this easily digestible portrait of small-town life, Vaughan compassionately and understatedly traces the evolution of one man’s grand vision and the petty politics that destroyed it. A thoughtful meditation that will appeal to animal lovers and readers interested in tales of small communities coming together.†—Kirkus Reviews“Journalist Vaughan skillfully narrates a resonant, at times heart-wrenching tale of small-town Americana…What could have been rote reporting in lesser hands springs to life as Vaughan dramatically revisits that grim day and the series of bad decisions that led up to it, giving a white-knuckle retelling of the rampage and the sad, even cruel, aftermath...Vaughan’s nuanced, poignant storytelling provides a sobering take on what happens when the best intentions go awry.†—Publishers Weekly“Vaughn takes into account the ways small-town politics and shifting loyalties color decisions. He deftly blends this with Haskins’s outsized vision, and how animal welfare is precariously balanced between competing interests. A fascinating small-town drama results in a heartrending read.†—Booklist“The author’s even-handed treatment of the story lifts it from the clichéd rut into which it might have fallen. Vaughan, like the best of nonfiction writers, realizes the importance of defining his characters’ behavioral motivations…This book deserves national attention and will certainly resonate with any reader who has driven the byways of rural Nebraska.†—Lincoln Journal Star“A marvelous, meaningful book, full of deep reporting, fine writing, and big questions about the nature of community, of living with animals, of challenging values. Zoo Nebraska will surprise and engage you and make you think.†—Susan Orlean, author of New York Times bestsellers The Library Book and The Orchid Thief“Zoo Nebraska is the kind of delightfully unexpected book that comes along once in a blue moon. The subject, the bittersweet and hilarious collapse of a once-charming zoo in a once-charming Midwest town, is as unlikely as it is wonderful. The chimpanzees run wild, and away we go. Carson Vaughan writes with eloquent meticulousness. He has a novelist’s eye. The overall impact is stunning.†—Buzz Bissinger, author of Father’s Day and New York Times bestseller Friday Night Lights“Reading like a sustained segment of This American Life, in a tone at once dryly comic and doleful, this account of bizarre events in northeastern Nebraska paints a portrait of the entire region and suggests a metaphor for mankind in general. Well observed and crisply written.†—Alexander Payne, Academy Award–winning director of Nebraska and The Descendants“Zoo Nebraska is Great Plains Gothic, Fargo meets S-Town meets Alexander Payne, a riveting tale of quixotic hopes and dreams and bad blood, all of it carefully, knowingly, sympathetically told.†—Kurt Andersen, author of New York Times bestsellers Fantasyland and Heyday and host of Studio 360“If there were such a thing as a dream anthropologist, you’d find Carson Vaughan at the top of the profession, helping us understand how some dreams become traps—become cages—and how sometimes when a dream dies, it kills everything around it. I truly feel that Vaughan’s chronicle of Royal, Nebraska, and its heartbreaking zoo is an Americana masterpiece.†—Bob Shacochis, author of Kingdoms in the Air“Dick Haskin’s dream of starting a primate research center in his tiny hometown in Nebraska is the kind of crazy notion that would be easy to mock or deride, especially when everything spins absurdly and tragically out of control. But Carson Vaughan recognizes something deeper. With Willa Cather’s eye for the countryside and the Coen brothers’ ear for dialogue, Vaughan reveals Haskin’s story for what it really is: a strange, ineffable, and heartbreaking emblem of what it means to live in—and feel circumscribed by—the narrow bounds of a dying town. This amazing book of good intentions and bad outcomes reminds us that no place is too small for big ideas or devastating consequences.†—Ted Genoways, James Beard Award–winning author of This Blessed Earth: A Year in the Life of an American Family Farm“In the finest John McPhee tradition, Carson Vaughan has picked his spot on the map; described its surface in careful, evocative detail; and then drilled deep, revealing the dreams, ambitions, frustrations, and failures of the citizens of Royal, Nebraska, who hoped to put their town on the map by opening a zoo. The product of meticulous research and reporting, Zoo Nebraska has a narrative drive and a collection of complex characters that few books, fiction or nonfiction, can match. It’s a remarkable achievement.†—Larry Watson, author of As Good as Gone and Montana 1984“With the deft touch of a novelist, Carson Vaughan brilliantly weaves an intricate, intimate, in-depth look into the heart and soul of a small Nebraska village. But along the way—from a tapestry of mischievous characters, memorable scenes, and machine-gun dialogue—he illuminates a much larger landscape chockablock with haunting questions: Can you ever know who you are if you don’t understand where you are? What happens if you lose the ability to dream? And in the end, what does it mean to be human? So read this real-life story carefully. Think about it lovingly. Handle it gently. Because this is a gem.†—Joe Starita, author of A Warrior of the People and I Am a Man“There is a movie here, in this thrilling, crisply reported, and altogether wonderful book, but despite the chimps romping around and terrorizing a tiny Nebraska town, it isn’t Planet of the Apes. No, Zoo Nebraska would ideally be codirected by Werner Herzog and John Ford as a story of obsession and folly leading to tragedy while at the same time leaving its characters, who seem as integral to the place as the dusty winds that blow through it, with their dignity intact. Carson Vaughan, like a young Truman Capote, takes us into the points of view of a multitude of characters who, like the roadside zoo at the book’s center, provide a menagerie of strangeness and possibility;but despite the temptation to caricature, he inhabits these people so fully and honestly on the page that he brings them and their story fully alive.†—David Gessner, New York Times bestselling author of All the Wild That Remains“Here is a real-life small-town drama, literary journalism that reads like a novel—heartbreak, dreams, bad luck, loss on a ‘local level,’ where pain can be seen and heard. It’s also sometimes very funny. Zoo Nebraska resides in the bull’s-eye of good literature: it’s about heart, soul, and grit—all made tactile. Vaughan, just out of the chute with his first book, has hit his stride already. This book will keep you up way past bedtime—reading to find out what could possibly come next, and next, and finally next. And if you were lucky enough to be raised in a small town, you will ever so clearly recognize lives, events, hopes, and fears that are so eloquently opened to you.†—Clyde Edgerton, author of The Floatplane Notebooks and Walking Across Egypt“This wild, beautiful book is so inventive and genuine, full of insight into life on this earth and particularly in the teeming microcosm of Zoo Nebraska. Who could guess that what happened here could so thoroughly and strangely explain our times?†—Rebecca Lee, author of Bobcat and Other Stories“Vaughan catapults into the sphere of my favorite writers by rooting out and unfurling this nearly lost but epic story of an American back road. This book howls to life and delivers a tale of people and critters like none I’ve ever heard. I was instantly lost in the fascinating story of an eccentric achievement and its violent, then slow grind into obsolescence. A brilliant writer and researcher, Vaughan dazzles when he turns all his talents to his home state, which in his hands, is flyover country no more.†—Devin Murphy, national bestselling author of The Boat Runner and Tiny Americans“From the very first sentences, this story grips you with such rich detail and passion for place and character that you won’t be able to put it down. Writing in the tradition of investigative work such as Susan Orlean’s The Orchid Thief, Carson Vaughan explores the tale of a small zoo in Royal, Nebraska, and the well-intentioned people whose untenable dreams are lost at great expense to the lives around them. Beginning with the calls to police, the story brings us into obsessions that drive the human heart beyond the boundaries of reason, leading to the inevitable tragedy that follows. This is a book not only for animal lovers but also for readers who want to experience the many corners of worlds we build through sheer will and imagination, the kind of private dreaming that is a hallmark of our culture.†—Jonis Agee, author of The Bones of Paradise“Carson Vaughan’s Zoo Nebraska is the real-life story of a struggling zoo improbably located in the dwindling farm town of Royal, Nebraska, population eighty-one. But it is also the tale of a hapless would-be primatologist, four doomed chimpanzees, and the fractious and eccentric community that both supports and destroys them—a narrative of obsession, yearning, and human frailty worthy of Melville and his white whale. By turns sweet, sad, funny, and tragic, Zoo Nebraska digs deep into what makes us human—and why we can’t stop making monkeys of ourselves.†—Robert Anthony Siegel, author of Criminals: My Family’s Life on Both Sides of the Law“A vivid evocation of a place and its people, Zoo Nebraska traces the rise and fall of a small zoo—concluding with the gripping narrative of the desperate efforts to capture escaped chimpanzees and the aftermath of that event. Carson Vaughan has written a fascinating tale from beginning to end.†—John Biguenet, author of The Torturer’s Apprentice and Silence“In Zoo Nebraska, Carson Vaughan traces the beauty and terror of one man’s dream to create a haven for exotic animals amid the fossil beds and farmland of rural Nebraska. What follows is an epic of small-town America, an all-too-human story where the dreams of men run wild of their aims and unlikely beasts break loose on city streets. Like Cather, Vaughan has an eye for the grace and folly of the pioneer heart against the vast, stern beauty of the American plains.†—Taylor Brown, author of Gods of Howl Mountain
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About the Author
Carson Vaughan is a freelance journalist from Nebraska who writes frequently about the Great Plains. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Paris Review Daily, Outside, Pacific Standard, Slate, the Atlantic, VICE, In These Times, and more. Zoo Nebraska is his first book.
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Product details
Hardcover: 238 pages
Publisher: Little A (April 1, 2019)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1503901505
ISBN-13: 978-1503901506
Product Dimensions:
5.5 x 1 x 8.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 14.7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.3 out of 5 stars
129 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#7,404 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Although, just as was Dick Haskin, I was enthralled by Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey regarding the work with primates, my life’s ambition was oriented more towards getting inside the heads of humans, just as the great explorer, John Goddard. Perhaps my conditioning was a reflection of my age, or, probably, because Goddard was a frequent lecturer at my high school in Southeast Los Angeles County.At any rate, I selected as my Amazon First Read the book “Zoo Nebraska†by Carson Vaughan with reluctance and trepidation. It, as well as most of this month’s choices, sounded a bit dreary and depressing. As a resident of the Midwest, I witness every day much of that depicted in this study of rural America. I see, all too frequently, the seemingly perpetual decline of what it means to be living in a region in which ‘newcomers’ include even the folks who moved into the town 20 years ago.However, I was a bit intrigued by the thought of someone starting a zoo. So, I took the chance. What follows below is my honest opinion of the writing and conclusions arrived at by the author. In other words, what did I enjoy or find interesting, and what I enjoyed less about “Zoo Nebraska.â€BLUSH FACTOR: After I finished reading, I did a search for eff words and found two. I state it this way, because they were included in a way that I easily forgot they were even in the book. They got in the book in honest reporting of what the person said, rather than for artistic purposes. The first is on page 180, the second on page 188, so, if you prefer to skip over them, you can. By no means would I suggest not buying the book due to the language, but that is your choice.POV: Third person point of view.WRITING & EDITING: The book starts a little slowly and with a little jumping around. Yet, without giving us so full a history of the town and its early mishaps and name-changing, the overall story arc might not have felt sufficiently rewarding. By about 20 percent into the book, I found it a real challenge to set the book aside. Perhaps, though, the first forty pages could have been condensed to, say, 20 or 25, to make for a quicker introduction to the more juicy bits. I think what I’m saying is that if you base your purchase decision on reading only the 10 percent sample, you’ll probably not find much of interest. However, I just want to state that the overall reading experience is much more interesting.EXCERPT:‘…He inched toward the ledge, found Jimmy Joe behind the wheel.“He’s inside here!†he called to Arvin below.“He’s inside the van?â€Jimmy Joe began to jump and thrash, rocking the van, screaming and tearing up the upholstery, smearing his blood across the dash, as if he just now realized he was trapped inside.“It was like Planet of the Apes,†Detlefsen says. “Every time I see that movie, I’m looking around because the scream in that movie is the same one [that came] out of that van.â€Duaine reparked his truck parallel to the blocks, creating a makeshift barricade. Two more locals joined the huddle with rifles slung over their shoulders.“Take him out inside the van?†the trooper asked Arvin.“Oh, we don’t want to break windows, do we?â€â€œAs long as he’s in there—â€â€œIf he tries to get out,†Arvin called back over his shoulder, “take him.â€But the standoff seemed to enter a strange intermission. Fifty-mile-an-hour gusts now whipped the trees like dirty rag dolls, their shadows dark and distended across the parking lot. The flag clanked against its pole. Another truck rumbled past on the highway. The sun bounced off the shiny hood of the trooper’s vehicle, the whole scene playing out upside down in its reflection. At least seven armed men…’Vaughan, Carson. Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream (pp. 180-181). Kindle Edition.BOTTOM LINEIf you buy “Zoo Nebraska,†be sure to read the Author’s Note and Acknowledgments in order to more fully appreciate the efforts of this journalist to accurately convey his understanding of the events leading up to, and including, the aftermath. Oh, and you might do as I, and purchase “The Hills of Mars†by D. R. Haskins. I look forward to another interesting history of small-town Nebraska.Certainly “Zoo Nebraska†is not a great read for every reader. It was, though, interesting and an intriguing read for me. It was much better than I feared it would be.Four stars out of five.I am striving to produce reviews that help you find books that you want, or avoid books that you wish to avoid. With your help, my improvement will help other readers find books they enjoy reading..
This is a carefully researched, beautifully written book about a place and an event that are both insignificant and universal. Royal, Nebraska is a dying prairie town. The school, post office, library, and Methodist church have closed their doors as the population declined. Young folks leave for more opportunities. The only ones left are those who are too old, too sick, or too odd to live elsewhere.Everyone loves the idea of living in a small town, but few people understand the realities of living in a place where you have little choice of friends and no privacy at all. Resentments fester and feuds are common. As one local says, "Royal has always had a 'Hatfields and McCoys' reputation." And yet the people of Royal love their town and for a few years they had something that set them apart from their neighbors. They had an accredited zoo.Dick Haskin was a serious, studious boy who wanted to get out of Royal. From the age of 12, he was fascinated by the study of primates in the wild. He planned to use his degree in life sciences from the University of Nebraska as a springboard to a career as a primatologist. He was offered an internship with at Dian Fossey's Karisoke Research Center in Rwanda, but Fossey's murder intervened and no other offers materialized.He took a job at a small zoo in Lincoln, Nebraska, and used his free time to study the chimpanzees. He developed a close relationship with a young chimp named Reuben, teaching him American Sign Language. But Dick disliked the concept of zoos and he eventually acquired Reuben and headed back to Royal with the dream of founding a primate study center.Amazingly, he managed to acquire other animals and to raise funds for housing for Reuben. A $55,000 contribution from Nebraska native-son Johnny Carson was both a financial windfall and a public relations prize. The tiny educational center operated on a shoestring, but was popular with locals and attracted attention from other parts of the state. But animal centers must meet strict federal and state standards to earn and keep a license. The strain of running a poorly-financed operation broke down Dick Haskin's health and he was forced to resign as director.A Canadian couple with experience in zoo management took over and acquired three more chimps and other animals, doubling the number of animals on display. But they didn't know that the zoo was deeply in debt and had received warnings from government agencies about the conditions in which the animals lived. When they criticized Dick Haskin's management, the board of directors indignantly fired them. Royal was NOT putting up with know-it-all outsiders!From then on, the zoo was run by untrained volunteers. Conditions (both financial and physical) deteriorated. On September 10, 2005, a volunteer failed to close a gate while the chimp enclosure was being cleaned and the four chimpanzees (all male) escaped. Two stayed on the zoo grounds, but two wandered into town.Chimpanzees are extremely powerful and can be very aggressive. As one expert said, "If one chimp escapes, someone will be hurt. If two chimps escape, someone will be killed." There has never been an incident int he U.S. where four chimps escaped at the same time, with some of them leaving the zoo grounds. While the rest of the country was watching the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, this tiny town was having its own horrific emergency and no one there was trained for it.The chapter that covers the escape of the four chimpanzees is hard to read. I was left weak-knee and very emotional. Many people savagely criticized the handling of the emergency, but the fact that there were no human casualties is a miracle. These untrained civilians dealt with the danger as best they could, with no time to think before they acted. It's easy to be wise after the fact. Everyone involved was scarred by the tragedy, but they moved on. What else can you do?What happened in Royal sounds like a horror movie, but the plain fact is that the keeping of "exotic" animals, including very dangerous ones by private individuals and in unlicensed road-side zoos without trained staff is more common than we want to believe. The tragedy in Royal could easily be repeated in many communities across America.This is an incredible book; investigative reporting at its very best. The author shows a real feel for the people in this tiny town. He presents their lives and opinions honestly, without ever being condescending or cruel. I'll be thinking about this book for a long time.
I grew up in southern Wisconsin, near Busseyville and Albion Prairie, with populations around 200 or so. Everybody knew everybody -- and we would often listen in the party lines to some amazingly intimate conversations. And, at 12, when I saw Lois with a blanket walking down to a nearby creek, everyone nearby in the country store knew what she was going to do.This tightly written real account of murder resonates with my memory of those days -- Georgia Jean Wexler was kidnapped when she was eight, we searched everywhere for her, we were outraged when her father was questioned, the fabric of our small community was torn apart.The author describes a very different type of crime in this history, one that seems alien to me now that I live in New York City, alien, that is until I remember and channel the fourteen year old boy I was at the time.A wonderful account, well written and worth every minute I spent reading it.Robert C. RossMarch 2019
Carson Vaughan's first book will resonate with any reader who has experienced the slower rhythms and occasionally eccentric people who choose to live in those small villages rusting away beside the highways on which travelers whiz past without a second thought. In 2005, Royal, Nebraska (pop. 63), was the site of a massacre of three escapees who terrorized the citizens residing in this remote and forlorn corner of the state. The victims were chimpanzees. The author's exploration of the incident is honest and thorough and imbues the book with the poignancy of broken dreams and failed aspirations.
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Juni 08, 2019
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