Subtitle on jacket: The amazing true story of a young family, a broken down zoo, and the 200 wild animals that changed their lives forever.

"A memoir"--Jacket.

A former British newspaper columnist describes how he uprooted his family to the English countryside and purchased a dilapidated zoo, home to more than two hundred exotic animals, which he planned to refurbish and reopen as a family business, a scheme complicated by a lack of money, skeptical staff, family tension, and his wife's devastating illness.