Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts
Maud Gage Baum was the daughter of one of the most famous and most radical of the 19th century suffragettes, Matilda Joslyn Gage, the author of Woman, Church, and State, a book that argued the church was responsible for women's oppression throughout history. As such Maud grew up to be a free thinker. Yet today she is most famous for being the wife of L. Frank Baum, the author of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. While several books have been written about her mother and her husband, this novel is the first to explore Maud's life. Alternating chapters of her life from 1871 when she is 10 to the publication of Baum's first Oz book in 1900, with chapters covering her attempts to influence the filming of MGM's Wizard of Oz in 1938 and 1939, this book paints a portait of Maud that I, as a fan of Oz literature, enjoyed. The reader gets to see the hardships of her life and her faith in the potential of Frank Baum before the success of the Oz books, as well as the author's take on a meeting between Maud and Judy Garland at MGM during the filming. As the title suggests, the book also tells you who she thinks was the inspiration for the character Dorothy. An enjoyable book that brings to life a woman who has been overshadowed by her famous relatives until now.
