Finding Dorothy A Novel

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.”