When Benjamin Mee decided to uproot his family and move them to an unlikely new home—a dilapidated zoo where more than 200 exotic animals would be their new neighbors—his friends and colleagues thought he was crazy. Mee’s dream was to refurbish the zoo and run it as a family business. The grand reopening was scheduled for spring, but there was much work to be done and none of it easy for the novice zookeepers. Tigers broke loose,...

A man buys a struggling zoo in Southern California and along with his family and employees, works to bring it back to life.

Adapted from a memoir by Benjamin Mee, the story of how the author, who has lost his wife, and his children cope with a dilapidated zoo, dealing with escaped tigers, raising endangered animals, working with an eclectic skeleton crew and readying the zoo for a reopening.