Finding Dorothy A Novel
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
15
Ratings4
Average rating3.5
This richly imagined novel tells the story behind The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the book that inspired the iconic film, through the eyes of author L. Frank Baum’s intrepid wife, Maud. “A breathtaking read that will transport you over the rainbow and into the heart of one of America’s most enduring fairy tales.”—Lisa Wingate, author of Before We Were Yours Hollywood, 1938: As soon as she learns that M-G-M is adapting her late husband’s masterpiece for the screen, seventy-seven-year-old Maud Gage Baum sets about trying to finagle her way onto the set. Nineteen years after Frank’s passing, Maud is the only person who can help the producers stay true to the spirit of the book—because she’s the only one left who knows its secrets. But the moment she hears Judy Garland rehearsing the first notes of “Over the Rainbow,” Maud recognizes the yearning that defined her own life story, from her youth as a suffragette’s daughter to her coming of age as one of the first women in the Ivy League, from her blossoming romance with Frank to the hardscrabble prairie years that inspired The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Judy reminds Maud of a young girl she cared for and tried to help in South Dakota, a dreamer who never got her happy ending. Now, with the young actress under pressure from the studio as well as her ambitious stage mother, Maud resolves to protect her—the way she tried so hard to protect the real Dorothy. The author of two New York Times bestselling nonfiction books, The Eighty-Dollar Champion and The Perfect Horse, Elizabeth Letts is a master at discovering and researching a rich historical story and transforming it into a page-turner. Finding Dorothy is the result of Letts’s journey into the amazing lives of Frank and Maud Baum. Written as fiction but based closely on the truth, Elizabeth Letts’s new book tells a story of love, loss, inspiration, and perseverance, set in America’s heartland. Praise for Finding Dorothy “In some ways reminiscent of Jerry Stahl’s excellent I, Fatty, Letts’ Finding Dorothy combines exhaustive research with expansive imagination, blending history and speculation into a seamless tapestry. . . . It’s a testament to Letts’ skill that she can capture on the page, without benefit of audio, that same emotion we have all felt sometime over the last 80 years while listening to ‘Over the Rainbow.’”—BookPage (starred review)
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A historical fiction book about The Wizard of Oz? Sure, sign me up. Sounds delightfully offbeat. Except that it kind of wasn’t and felt a little bland.
This book uses two points in time to tell its story: First, Maud Baum in 1939 trying her best to see her late husband’s creation done justice on the big screen. But to her that seems to mean word-for-word, scene-for-scene, authentic to the book, when this movie was intended to be a technicolor wonder for the masses. She also disagrees with the casting of Dorothy, and has to work through her hangups about both the movie and the actress to see both done right. Interspersed with this tale from Hollywood is Maud’s own life story about how she met Frank, how their whirlwind (heehee) romance led her down some unexpected and rocky paths, and how their experiences, highs, and lows translated into the book that Frank Baum is known for.
I just….wish I liked this book more. I tried very hard to like it since I have friends and family that all highly recommended it, but I kind of thought it was boring. Maud doesn’t seem to have a very likeable personality, either in old Maud being a seemingly stubborn curmudgeon on set to everyone around her about what Frank would have wanted, or in young Maud finding fault with Frank’s flights of fancy and trying her hardest to step on everything he loved so that they could have a "normal" life together. I thought the bits about Judy’s time on set were interesting (in a depressing child-actress-in-the-1930s sort of way), but there wasn’t a lot of that to build a story off of. And I really felt for Frank trying to make it as a creative type in the 1880s when that sort of profession was frowned up and not considered a respectable line of work. But the rest was kind of a slog to get through, and I didn’t really feel particularly connected with either story being told. It felt like most (all?) of the not-main characters were two dimensional and existed just in name as a placeholder in the story, which made large parts of the book a little hard to get through for me.
Still, it’s fairly highly rated, so if fluffy historical fiction is your thing and you love the Oz movie, give this a go. I found it flat and boring, but I’m also not really into really fluffy books either. YMMV.
L. Frank Baum, the author of one of the most popular children's series of all time, the Oz books. Maud Gage Baum, daughter of one of history's great activists for women's rights. Judy Garland, child actress making the motion picture that would create her reputation, the movie that has, it's thought, been seen by more people than any other movie, The Wizard of Oz.
Put these elements together and you can't help but having a compelling storyline. And it's all based on fact.
I learned lots about the people and stories that combined in L. Frank Baum's imagination to become the Oz stories, and it was fascinating to watch the making of the movie. Diverting.
“Magic isn't things materializing out of nowhere. Magic is when a lot of people all believe in the same thing at the same time, and somehow we all escape ourselves a little bit and meet up somewhere, and just for a moment, we taste the sublime.”
