When a reader is enjoying a historical novel, she is likely to wonder how much of the story is drawn from real life. In the case of Finding Dorothy, I have altered some dates and names for clarity and plot development, but most of my story is based on known historical fact. Before writing a single word, I turned to biographies and diaries, letters and photographs to help me reconstruct the Baums’ lives. I found that Frank Baum’s inspirations for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz have been well documented. You find in Baum’s book the witches his mother-in-law wrote about in her well-regarded though radical tome Woman, Church and State. You find in the novel the scarecrow that haunted Maud’s childhood, and shadows of the Tin Man in Frank’s years selling axle grease for a firm called Baum’s Castorine Company. If you are interested in reading more about L. Frank Baum’s life, there are several excellent biographies, including Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story, by Evan I. Schwartz; The Real Wizard of Oz: The Life and Times of L. Frank Baum, by Rebecca Loncraine; L. Frank Baum: Creator of Oz, by Katharine M. Rogers; and Baum’s Road to Oz, edited by Nancy Tystad Koupal.
But when it comes to the inspiration for the character of Dorothy, no clear consensus emerged. The Baums had no daughters. Some have speculated that Frank named the character after one of Maud’s nieces, T.C.’s daughter, Dorothy Gage, who died in infancy in 1898, but I found this theory less compelling when I discovered that Frank used the name Dorothy in a story called “Little Bun Rabbit,” which was published in 1897, before Maud’s niece Dorothy was born. In that story, the character Dorothy is described as a gentle little girl living on a farm who was so kindhearted that she was able to talk to animals. So, perhaps Maud’s little niece, who lived only five months, was named after Baum’s character, not the other way around.
But there has long been a consensus among Oz scholars that Baum’s vision of Kansas was modeled on the prairie town of Aberdeen, then part of the Dakota Territory where Maud and Frank arrived just as a farming boom was turning to bust. In particular, Baum seems to have drawn inspiration from the hardscrabble life of Maud’s older sister Julia and her husband, who staked a claim in LaMoure County, Dakota (later North Dakota) in 1884. The Carpenters lived on a harsh and unforgiving homestead just as the drought was making it almost impossible to eke out a living from a government claim. Julia’s handwritten diary, which I located in the collection of the State Historical Society of North Dakota, provided me with many details of her life, including her struggles with her health, with the harsh environment on the Dakota claim, and with the death of her son Jamie when he was an infant. Her husband was nearly ten years her junior, an alcoholic, a harsh man, and a poor farmer. Julia carefully recorded lists of her Christmas gifts, her children’s teething and illnesses, the unrelenting burden of her work, and her dreadful loneliness in an isolated shanty with none but the wolves and the distant stars for company. But much was left unsaid—such as a haunting entry from one bleak midwinter day in 1888, when she wrote simply, “What a terrible night!” Within those margins, I’ve fleshed out her story.
After losing their farm, the Carpenter family was able to relocate, first to the small town of Edgeley, where Magdalena got a chance to attend school, and later to Fargo, North Dakota, where Frank set up his brother-in-law in the insurance business. Their material life improved considerably, but James Carpenter remained an unhappy man, eventually committing suicide at the age of sixty. Julia Carpenter suffered from health problems throughout her life, although she remained dedicated to the Christian Science faith, which forbade her from taking medicine. But her mental health also remained precarious, and she died in a sanatorium. Magdalena graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1909. Her daughter Jocelyn Burdick, Matilda Joslyn Gage’s great-granddaughter, was the first woman to serve as a United States senator from North Dakota.
Maud’s own life—the unconventional childhood with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as frequent visitors in her home, the hazing she suffered at Cornell, her near-fatal bout with childbed fever, her work as a seamstress to support their family, and her close relationships with her mother, sister, and husband—is based on historical fact. Maud had four boys, and she did at one time ask her sister if she could adopt Magdalena, an offer her sister declined. She certainly pined for a daughter in many of her letters. The Baum family did visit Chicago’s famous White City on more than one occasion, and many researchers believe that it served as an inspiration for the Emerald City. The dedication to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz reads: “This book is dedicated to my good friend and comrade. My Wife.” Frank Baum died in 1919 at the age of sixty-two of complications from gallbladder surgery. A bankruptcy in 1910, after Frank’s early foray into the nascent film industry, had led to Maud consigning the rights of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to their creditors. Yet Maud still had the money to build Ozcot, the Baums’ first permanent home, thanks to her inheritance from her mother. After Maud’s death, Ozcot was razed to make way for a nondescript apartment building, but the Baums’ home in Aberdeen, South Dakota, still stands.
Finding Dorothy streamlines Maud and Frank’s life stories, skipping over some events in their long life together. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was Frank’s first full-length book, and the one that brought lasting prosperity to his family, but he published two other books of nonsense poetry before its publication. In the interest of simplicity, I left out several close family members. In addition to T.C. and Julia, Maud had another older sibling, Helen. In addition to Magdalena and Jamie, Julia had another son named Harry. T.C. had another daughter, Matilda Jewell, as well as two daughters who died in infancy.
If you would like to learn more about the creation of the classic film The Wizard of Oz, I would recommend The Making of the Wizard of Oz, by Aljean Harmetz. “Over the Rainbow” was almost cut from the film after a sneak preview. Many of the people associated with the film later took credit for saving the song. Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics for “Over the Rainbow,” later wrote the songs for a successful Broadway play, Bloomer Girl, whose story was inspired by women’s rights activist Amelia Bloomer, a contemporary of Matilda Gage’s. Harburg was blacklisted in the 1950s after refusing to cooperate with the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Did Frank’s jacket really appear on the set of The Wizard of Oz? The unit publicist never backed away from her story that the jacket worn by Frank Morgan during the Kansas scenes was purchased in a secondhand shop by someone in the wardrobe department and was later authenticated by both Maud Baum and the Chicago tailor as having belonged to L. Frank Baum.
Judy’s life, her difficulties as a child actor, and the story of her father, whose experiences living as a closeted gay man in the early twentieth century caused her family to be run out of their small-town homes on several occasions, are all drawn from historical fact. The ruthless treatment she received at the hands of studio executives, the studio doctors who plied her with pills, her pushy stage mother, her father’s death in a hospital while she sang on national radio, and instances of sexual harassment at the studio all come from documented sources. Arthur Freed may or may not have molested Judy, but he did expose himself to Shirley Temple when she was only eleven years old. “Over the Rainbow” was Judy’s signature song, the touchstone she returned to again and again—but, tragically, Judy Garland never did manage to find that peace for herself. In her own words, “I tried my damndest to believe in the rainbow that I tried to get over and I couldn’t.” And yet, it was her role as Dorothy and her rendition of “Over the Rainbow” that cemented her place in immortality.
The Wizard of Oz debuted in 1939 to generally positive reviews and moderate box office success, but it was not the top-grossing film of that year. After its debut on television in 1956, however, it was screened yearly on network television until 1980, and viewing the film became a beloved holiday tradition for an entire generation, making The Wizard of Oz one of the most-viewed films of all time. “Over the Rainbow” was voted the No. 1 song of the twentieth century by the Recording Industry Association of America and the National Endowment for the Arts.
For
Susanna Porter
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It often feels as if an author gets to play the wizard while an army of hardworking people behind the scenes whisper, “Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” This is my place to thank the many, many people without whom this book, and none of my books, would be possible. It is an understatement to say that I’m grateful that with their help I’m able to spend my time doing the thing I love the most in the world—making up stories.