a novel
Dorothy Silver is fifty-two, newly widowed, and angry. Her beloved husband has had the nerve to drop dead after uprooting her from a life she loved.
Suddenly she realizes that the major decisions of her life have been made by others. Her mother had named her after Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, bought her a dog called Toto, and to this day equates her with the young Judy Garland. Her husband, in late middle age, sold their big old house and moved them into a smart and, to her, alien condo in Boston's Back Bay. Then, wearing his get-young-again green jogging shorts and blue sneakers, he died in Boston Gardens. Her children, self-sufficient and independent, are, ironically, more equipped to deal with the world than she is.
Dorothy begins to question her life, her marriage, and her family in a way that at first frustrates and then shocks her. Gradually, she realizes that the time has come for growth, for self-discovery, and for finding her own way home from Oz.