I have a soul deep love of fiction that comes from the heartland of America. Thus, I’m predisposed to enjoy a book like Before Dorothy, which tells us the story of Auntie Em and Uncle Henry before and after they let a young Dorothy Gale into their lives. Hazel Gaynor adds beautiful narrative depth to Emily’s backstory that feels rich and new. This is a lovely novel.

Emily Kelly and her sister, Annie, are Irish girls who work as assistants in a dress shop in Chicago. The sisters are similar and yet individual; while Emily yearns for great wide adventure with her spirited ways, Annie is a social butterfly and flapper. Annie begins to fall for the slick John Gale; Emily, meanwhile, is swept away by his dreamy-eyed cousin, Henry. But loving Henry means leaving Chicago and Annie behind for a life on the Kansas prairie.

Eventually, Annie marries John and has Dorothy; Em finds love with Henry and creates a farm in Kansas. But when Annie and John drown during a boating trip on Lake Michigan,  Dorothy becomes Em’s to raise, a prospect she’s plenty nervous about. Not only must she deal with new motherhood, she must cope with life on the prairie, which includes a drought, dust storms, and other hazards that could permanently endanger the farm. And too there are secrets; about Dorothy’s paternity, about the man who has arrived promising the starving Kansas prairie rain. Between the elements, illness, and the danger of life in the fields, will Em and Henry and Dorothy hold onto their dreams?

Brimming with family unity, romance, yearning for independence, and what matters most, Before Dorothy is a gorgeous piece of work that has a skosh of Little House on the Prairie in it; but is still realistic about life in the dust bowl. You can feel things crack and break and go quite dry as the narrative goes onward; you end up feeling like Em, wanting to fly away from it all.

Em is a wonderful central heroine; strong, warm-blooded and realistic. Her love of Henry is beautifully understandable, and the way she loves lively Annie, even as the lies between them and their differing lives tear them apart. I loved Annie’s ways too, and Henry was a wonderfully charming guy; you come to understand why Em runs off to Kansas to be with him. Dorothy is a realistically spunky child instead of a plot moppet – and yes, there are plenty of Wizard of Oz easter eggs for those who’re looking.

This isn’t an A because the plot does drag in the middle, and sometimes when things speed up disasters compound in a way that feels melodramatic. Those flaws are small, though, and Before Dorothy is a gorgeous character study that’s easy to love.
Note: This book contains an explicitly-depicted on-page miscarriage as well as on-page childbirth.