I love reading new fiction inspired by old fiction, but for the author there is danger as well as temptation in heading down an imaginative path first drawn by another writer. With Before Dorothy, Hazel Gaynor has made wise choices, both in her characters and their circumstances.
The action of Before Dorothy begins in 1922, so the Kansas prairies Gaynor depicts are not that of L Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (published in 1900), but closer to the 1939 movie adaptation. By setting Before Dorothy before and during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl of the 1930s, the reader retains the visual cues from the film in this Aunt Em origin story.
Baum’s Aunt Em is a minor character, described as thin, gaunt and unsmiling, almost destroyed by the harsh reality of farming, whereas Gaynor has given Emily a complete history and a joyful and fully realised interior existence.
The Emily of Before Dorothy is one of three sisters from an Irish immigrant family. She marries would-be farmer Henry Gale not long after her sister Annie marries his wealthy cousin, John. Several years later, John and Annie drown in a boating accident on Lake Michigan, and their orphaned child is given to Emily and Henry to raise: “Dorothy had nothing and she now needed her Aunt Em to be everything.” Dorothy’s fortune has gone too, for John Gale died bankrupt.
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Gaynor’s Kansas is a place where “prosperity and ruin were as finely balanced as a circus performer on a high wire”, and her descriptions – particularly of weather and nature – are so evocative you can almost feel the relentless heat and taste the dust.
Wizard of Oz fans will enjoy this novel’s many Easter eggs, including references to circus acts, a nasty neighbour, a toy lion and such knowing comments as Henry saying of John, “I’m quite sure if you tapped his chest there would be an echo where his heart should be.”
[ From the archive: There’s no place like home: The Wizard of Oz, 80 years onOpens in new window ]
This imaginative tribute is a fresh and vivid story of one woman’s extraordinary adventure and the places that shape us. Even – perhaps especially – those that aren’t home.
