Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts (2019 fiction)
Maud Gage Baum was born in 1861, the daughter of Matilda Gage, who was a prominent women’s rights advocate and a contemporary of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. So it’s no wonder that Maud had a free and enriching childhood and resisted many of the conventions of the time. She was one of the first women to attend Cornell University. When she married L. Frank Baum, an actor and the head of a traveling theater troupe, it was a case of “opposites attract.” This is the story of Maud and Frank’s sometimes troubled but always entertaining marriage, and their struggle to survive over many years until he finally achieved success with his Wizard of Oz book series. It is also the story of Maud’s attempts in 1939 to make sure that the movie stayed true to Frank’s book and her relationship with Judy Garland. It is a very entertaining fictional biography of a woman that I would like to have known. What I found particularly interesting and almost magical are the events in Maud’s and Frank’s lives that sparked events and characters in the Wizard of Oz books. While this is indeed a novel, the author explains in her Afterword that she took very few liberties in telling Maud’s story. I really enjoyed reading it. Recommended!
Reviewed by Ginger Russell
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