Chicago, February 1932. A woman named Emily Gale arrives from Kansas to collect her newly orphaned niece, Dorothy, after her beloved sister and brother-in-law died in a freak boating accident on Lake Michigan.
Anytime the names “Dorothy” and “Auntie Em” are paired together in a story, most readers would have a pretty good idea what this novel centers around. However, this isn’t a story about any yellow brick road or a magical emerald city. As the title suggests, “Before Dorothy” speculates about the family history of Kansas’s famous ambassador to the land of Oz.
