On February 18 at 2:30 p.m. we will discuss Finding Dorothy by Elizabeth Letts at St. Matthew’s.
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 Gage Baum. In 1938, nineteen years after Frank’s passing, Maud visits the M-G-M set where they are adapting her late husband’s masterpiece for the screen. She is the only person who can help the producers stay true to the spirit of the book; she’s the only one left who knows its secrets. When she hears Judy Garland rehearsing “Over the Rainbow,” Maud recognizes the yearning that defined her own life story: from her youth as a leading suffragist’s daughter and one of the first women in the Ivy League, to the hardscrabble prairie years with Frank which inspired the series of Oz books. Now, with the young actress under pressure from the studio as well as from her ambitious stage mother, Maud resolves to protect her as she tried to protect the real Dorothy in South Dakota. Written as fiction but based closely on the truth, Letts is a master at discovering and researching a rich historical story and transforming it into a page-turner.
Save the date: On March 17 we will discuss The River of Doubt: Theodore Roosevelt’s Darkest Journey by Candice Millard.
Recent Comments