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Kansas, 1896. After a tornado destroys the Gale family farm, eleven-year-old Dorothy goes missing. The Gales are terrified the worst has happened. But when the girl turns up unharmed four days later, the townsfolk breathe a sigh of relief. That is, until Dorothy herself relates her account of the events that took place during her disappearance. In vivid detail, Dorothy describes a fantastical land and its magical inhabitants. Her recollections are not only regarded as delusional, but also as pagan and diabolical, especially when the body of a local spinster is found matching Dorothy's description of a witch she claims to have killed.
In L. Frank Baum's Oz series (yes, there are more books in the canon than the ever popular The Wonderful Wizard of Oz), Dorothy Gale returns to Kansas after her incredible and wonderous journey through Oz with a fantastical tale of her adventures, and later makes subsequent trips to the fairyland, eventually bring her family back with her to Oz to live there for good. Baum's Dorothy is not treated like a young girl suffering from delusions ... but what if she had been?
Gordon McAlpine's final novel (he passed away in 2021 before the publication of this book) After Oz is no fairytale. Firmly rooted in the real world, McAlpine takes the Dorothy story and turns it on his head. How would a God-fearing community in late 1800's Kansas treat a child if they began speaking of a magical land that they visited where they melted a witch? Perhaps you might chalk up such proclamations to an overactive imagination, but what if the town's unlikeable spinster was found dead with her face melted off by lye? Would you believe the child then ... and perhaps accuse her of murder?
Such is the stuff of After Oz, which treats Dorothy not as a Princess of Oz as she comes to be in Baum's later works, but rather a social pariah and murder. Being that the book is titled "After Oz," the story follows the work of a NYC psychologist who comes to Kansas to interview Dorothy at the Topeka Insane Asylum after her trip to Oz and the subsequent unfortunate events. There, she tries to make sense of Dorothy's story and past, and in doing so, uncovers some deeply hidden dark secrets.
I love the ingenuity and creative license that went into writing this intriguing reimagining of the classic Oz tale. As an Oz fanatic (I own the entire canon complete with the beautifully illustrated vintage covers), I appreciate McAlpine bringing something new and thought-provoking to the original Oz story. When viewing Dorothy's tale of scarecrows, tin men, and cowardly lions through a real-world 19th century lens, the magic is stripped away and we are left with a child who would certainly be classified as offbeat and fanciful, if not demented. McAlpine expertly grounds Dorothy's journey to Oz with a narrative not about a girl who journeys to a magical fairyland, but rather one who finds herself imprisoned for telling tall tales that eerily mimic reality.
While the concept of After Oz is stellar, the delivery of the storyline is not the most enthralling or compelling. Spending much of the book in the head of a psychologist as she analyzes a child and puts together pieces of a small town mystery will appeal to some, but not to all, especially those who are looking for a greater focus on Dorothy, who surprisingly plays a minor role in this darkly ominous novel of life on the prairie in 1896. - Brooke, Public Relations Librarian