The land of Oz serves as the backdrop in Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts, but it’s more than a look behind the green curtain where the wizard was hiding.
The novel’s timeline alternates between 1938 when filming on the MGM classic took place and the life of Maud Baum, whose husband Frank authored the beloved series.
Beginning in 1871, this novel, based on fact, chronicles Maud’s childhood as the daughter of a suffragette, her experience at Cornell University where she was one of 19 women in a class with more than 200 men, and how she came to meet, then marry Baum.
The chapters set in 1938 show Maud striving to impress upon the movie’s power team the importance of staying true to her husband’s book. This, she’s convinced, depends on Judy Garland being able to project Dorothy’s innocence and hope. Maud sees this threatened by the movie studio’s efforts to control Garland through a regimen of diet and sleeping pills. Thus, Maud reaches out to protect the young actress.
The chapters concentrating on Maud’s life are a glimpse into the whimsical nature of her husband, the efforts for women’s right to vote, hardscrabble life on the North Dakota plains and her struggle to find meaning in her own life.
Letts deftly defines the various time frames and landscapes. Even though readers know the ultimate success of the movie, it’s Maud’s growth that is most captivating. How Frank came to write the Oz stories their popularity merely provides the framework.
Finding Dorothy
Four Bookmarks
Ballantine Books 2019
351 pages
The Blue Page Special 
Leave a Reply