Before Dorothy - Softcover

Gaynor, Hazel

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593440331 ISBN 13: 9780593440339

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

THE USA TODAY BESTSELLER · Long before Dorothy visits Oz, her aunt, Emily Gale, sets off on her own grand adventure, leaving gritty Chicago behind for Kansas and a life that will utterly change her, in this transporting novel from New York Times bestselling author Hazel Gaynor.

As featured in People · Us Weekly · Woman's World · and more!

Chicago, 1924: Emily and her new husband, Henry, yearn to leave the bustle of Chicago for the promise of their own American dream among the harsh beauty of the prairie. But leaving the city means leaving Emily’s beloved sister, Annie, who was once closer to her than anyone in the world.

Kansas, 1932: Emily and Henry have established their new home among the warmth of the farming community in Kansas. Aligned to the fickle fortunes of nature, their lives hold a precarious and hopeful purpose, until tragedy strikes and their orphaned niece, Dorothy, lands on their doorstep.

The wide-eyed child isn’t the only thing to disrupt Emily’s world. Drought and devastating dust storms threaten to destroy everything, and her much-loved home becomes a place of uncertainty and danger. When the past catches up with the present and old secrets are exposed, Emily fears she will lose the most cherished thing of all: Dorothy.

Bursting with courage and heart, Before Dorothy tells the story of the woman who raised a beloved heroine, and ponders the question: what is the true meaning of home?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Hazel Gaynor

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

1
February 1932

The city was a colorless palette of gray as Emily Gale arrived at her sister’s South Shore row house. Even the familiar brownstone building that had once carried shades of copper and gold in its brickwork was now dulled. She paused at the foot of the steps and drew in a long anxious breath. The frigid air caught the back of her throat and made her cough.

Courage, Em. Courage.

Henry’s parting words were a distant echo, muffled by the miles she’d traveled from Kansas, and further diminished by the city’s towering skyscrapers. She had never felt so out of place, so uncertain, so entirely alone. There was no sweet meadowlark’s song to cheer her, no comforting rush of rippling ripened wheat, no trace of the purpose and renewal usually carried by the first hopeful day of spring on the prairie. This was a place of sorrow and uncertainty.

A wave of grief and guilt consumed her.

Courage.

She took a moment to compose herself, stiffening her shoulders before she walked up the steps and lifted the heavy iron knocker, letting it fall, just once, against the imposing ebony door. The sound carried the somber tone of a church bell at a funeral mass. Appropriate, in the circumstances.

A moment passed.

Silence.

Perhaps there’d been a misunderstanding, an alternative arrangement made. Guilt chided her for hoping it might be so. The child was her responsibility now. Hers, and Henry’s. How she wished he were beside her, ready to offer his calm encouragement and steady reassurance. “If I come with you, there’ll be nobody here to welcome you home,” he’d said. “I’ll make cornbread. Sweep the porch.” His attempt to lighten the mood was appreciated, but the usual crinkle at his eyes had been absent. What would home mean for them now?

A stiff breeze swirled, capturing early blossom in tiny whirling cyclones at the edge of the steps and tugging at Emily’s cloche as she caught her reflection in the beveled glass panels of the door. She practiced a reassuring smile, befitting of a kindly aunt, but all she could manage was a grimace. Her words also failed her. She’d carefully rehearsed what she would say to the child, repeating the sentences over and over in her mind, but now that she was here, everything felt wrong. There was nothing she could ever say to make this better.

She tried to relax, desperately searching in the glass for the confident young woman who’d stood here countless times before, arms full of flowers to bring a smile to her sister’s face, or laden down with newly discovered novels to press enthusiastically into her hands. “You’ll love this one, Annie! It’s all moody moors, and destructive passion!” She’d believed anything was possible back then—a world at peace after years of war, exciting new opportunities to be grasped by those brave enough to take a chance—but the woman looking back at her now carried no blooms or books or bold ambitions, only the trace of life’s cruel lessons etched into her pinched expression and tangled among the first silver hairs at her temples. They said the prairie aged folk prematurely. She was proof of it.

She lifted the knocker again. Let it fall, again.

Despite the spring day, winter still laced the Chicago air. Steely clouds smothered the sun, leaving a cold flat light as the sharp bite of the wind off Lake Michigan sent a shiver through Emily’s bones. The lining of her black mourning coat had been sacrificed for a shirt for Henry last fall, the remaining garment no match for the drop in temperature between Kansas and Illinois. A day’s journey by railroad, and yet the place Emily had left and the place she had arrived to were so entirely different that she might have traveled for a hundred years. She shivered again, the wintry day not the only cause of her rattling bones. She had good reason to be anxious.

She knocked twice more in quick succession, the dull thud thud matching the heave of her heart.

Finally, a figure approached on the other side of the glass.

Emily swallowed a swell of nerves. She smoothed the creases from her coat sleeves, pushed back her shoulders, and pinched her cheeks to summon some color there, but her fidgeting and fussing stopped abruptly as the door opened and a woman—a maid?—stepped forward.

“Mrs. Gale, is it?” The woman’s face was milk pale. Her eyes carried the unmistakable ruby hue of grief.

“Emily Gale, yes,” Emily replied. “Annie’s sister.” She hesitated a moment. “I’m sorry. We haven’t met. And you are?”

“Cora McNulty. The housekeeper.” The woman dabbed at her eyes with a lace handkerchief. “I’m so sorry for your loss, Mrs. Gale. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam.”

The burst of Irish language caught Emily by surprise. Her reply to the offered condolences came naturally, but not easily. “Go raibh maith agat.”

She hadn’t heard anyone speak as Gaeilge for so many years that to hear it now summoned an overwhelming ache for her sister, for her family, for Ireland. The place she’d first called home.

Cora offered a thin smile as she reached for Emily’s small traveling case. “Now, would you ever come on inside, Mrs. Gale. That wind would slice you in two, so it would. You must be tired after your journey.”

Emily was glad to get out of the cold, but a chill lingered on her skin as she stepped into the wood-paneled entrance hall and time seemed to stand still. It was all so hauntingly familiar: the fleur-de-lis ceiling rose, the glittering chandelier, the soft light from the Tiffany wall sconces. Annie’s fur coat on the stand, John’s hat and cane beside it. But it was the trace of perfume in the air that took her breath away, the seductive scent of tobacco and jasmine, as if Annie had just that moment breezed past in that effortless liquid way of hers. Not walking, but floating. Emily could see her so clearly, spritzing a cloud of scent into the air before twirling around beneath it so that it settled on every part of her. “It’s called Habanita, by Molinard. All the flappers use it. Isn’t it delicious!” Her exaggerated French accent had made Emily laugh. There had been so much laughter back then. So much fun. So much love.

Emily stiffened as a haunting melody punctuated the silence.

A child’s voice.

A reminder of the reason she was here.

“How is she?” she asked.

Cora shook her head. “Terrible quiet. Hardly said a word since, God love her. And the dreams keeping her awake at night.”

“Dreams?”

“Nightmares really. The poor thing gets in such a state.” Cora crossed herself in the Catholic way as a distant look fell across her face.

The singing came again, a little louder this time, beckoning Emily toward a room on the right of the entrance hall.

She remembered her niece only in thin fragments and wispy memories: a bawling newborn, pink as a prairie rose in her crib; the barely-there sensation of the infant in her arms; the sweet nutty scent as she’d whispered goodbye; the way the child had looked at her, as if she already knew how their story would end.

“Does she know why I’m here?” Emily asked. “Or where she’s going?”

“I’ve tried to explain as best I could, but who knows what’s going through her mind. It’s so much for the wee cratur to take in.” Cora dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. Emily recognized the delicate Connemara lace. “Here,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593440331
• ISBN 13: 9780593440339
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 369
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: BERKLEY; https://www.penguin.com/?s=BERKLEY; ; Unit 2 Limavady Business Park; Limavady; County Londonderry; BT49 0HR; Vereinigtes Königreich
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