Before Dorothy is homage to women keeping family together in extreme times

All writers have chunks of unfinished books lying around their lives, writes Brian Byrne. Ideas that ultimately didn't want their stories told at the time. For Kilcullen novelist Hazel Gaynor, it was 30,000 words of a reimagined Wizard of Oz, set in modern Dublin, crunched out in 2009. But it wasn't going anywhere, and she laid it aside in favour of setting out her Titanic story, The Girl Who Came Home. In 2012, that became Hazel's first published novel and a bestseller on both sides of the Atlantic. Now she's back, kind of, in the Wizard of Oz space.

Her 12th book, Before Dorothy, is inspired by L. Frank Baum's classic American fairy tale. No, it's not set in Dublin. Yes, it's magical. No, it's not a fantasy spin-off. "The movie was a Christmas Day television staple in our house when we were growing up, and it always fascinated me," she recalls. "That's probably why I tried to write the reimagined Dublin version. But I didn't really know what I was doing at the time, and obviously, it wasn't the right style of book for me then, or the right story."

Talking to her editorial team after her last book was finished, she had pitched a couple of historical fiction ideas that weren't quite working. "For the first time, I found myself struggling to find the right next book. So I remembered my Wizard of Oz. I went to my bookshelf and picked up a copy of the Gregory Maguire life of the Wicked Witch. I laughed and said that's the genius reimagining done, so I can forget about it."

She went for a walk, and the name 'Auntie Em' just popped into her head. "I cut my walk short and came home and took out my little copy of The Wizard of Oz and looked her up." But there was very little about Dorothy's Auntie Em, except she was a brusque sort of farm woman, a little stern. "And that's really all we know from the original story, except that in her journey along the Yellow Brick Road, Dorothy kept crying for her. Then I came across the one description of her, that when she first came to live in Kansas she was a 'young, pretty wife, but the sun and wind had changed her, taken the sparkle from her eyes ... the red from her lips ... and she never smiled'. I literally got goosebumps. There was a story here to be told, with lots of lovely gaps, and as a writer you roll up your sleeves and get stuck in."

Hazel's previous books are fiction based on people in real historical instances. She always diligently researches the backgrounds in which her characters unfold their personal stories ... although this time the story she was extracting Auntie Em from was itself fantasy fiction. The original children's novel was written in 1900, but she decided that Auntie Em's adventures could take place in the context of two disasters in the 1930s — the financial crash of the Great Depression and the 'Dust Bowl' farming catastrophe. "As always, I've gone back to a real piece of history to root my fictional character in. But obviously there's the extra layer of this beloved story and a character that I'm bringing out of the world we meet her in and putting her into a real world environment. This is not a fairy story, there are no talking creatures, but I give a nod to that through examples of what a farmer's wife and young child would have encountered in the time and place of the Dust Bowl."

Hazel admits to having felt some trepidation about possibly tampering with a classic, but she figured she now had the experience to do it. "This was going to be written from a place of real love and respect, and it was just pure excitement to be stepping into that world in a very different way. I don't think I could have done this book any earlier in my career because I would probably have been too intimidated. But having often felt imposter syndrome, as all creative people do, you just learn to go and do the very best you can with your version of events."

Her background research this time was in some ways made easier because, like in any disaster of modern times, there's a huge amount of information. "There are first-person accounts from the Dust Bowl. There are the songs of Woody Guthrie. Books like Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath. There is an incredible amount of journalistic accounts of the people and families affected, what was happening politically, and there were film documentaries and photographs of the incredible dust storms barreling over the prairie. These were terrifying things, which to me were the metaphor for the Wicked Witch."

Before Dorothy weaves all that into a 'what if' story about Emily — Auntie Em — trying to raise a child who has come into her life at the worst possible time. It brings the reality of a conflicted woman trying to navigate a road she has never previously travelled. It is also very much an homage to how women hold families and community together in the most trying of circumstances. "The men are out trying to support each other and protesting about the response to their situation from politicians in Washington. The women are the ones literally making clothing for their children out of feed and grain sacks, keeping the family show on the road with real courage."

Because Emily is a fictional character to whom L. Frank Baum gave no backstory, Hazel felt able to link her to Ireland as the child of Irish immigrants. The Auntie Em we learn to empathise with, in all her tribulations, is the more real to us for that. She also becomes a person we can love. "We all have that image of her from the film, that she's not particularly likeable. But one reviewer said my book pulls Auntie Em out of her sepia world in the film and gives her a 'full colour life'. That was lovely, because that's exactly what I wanted to do. I would never want to change the original material, but hopefully I have given another angle into that story."

Hazel is fascinated by the many interpretations of The Wizard of Oz, in song, movies, Broadway plays, and documentaries. "It was written 125 years ago, and all that is testament to what is a very simple story. It's good versus evil. It's all the things we care about, friendship, going on a journey, overcoming adversity, and being scared but braver than we think we might be. That's why we keep going back to it."

Before Dorothy is a very real look at the challenges of the world in which Emily's story is set, a gritty contrast to the fantasy of the original tale. But there are light and humorous moments and people too, including an unplanned character called Adelaide 'who just appeared at my door'. "She literally breezed in one day and I was like, well, she's lovely, so let's go with that. She serves a role and definitely adds another element to the story and to Emily and Dorothy's life as well."

Before Dorothy launches in the US on 17 June and in the UK and Ireland on the 19th. Order your copy now at Woodbine Books in Kilcullen.

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