Before Dorothy

The novel opens with an excerpt from Emily Gale's memoir, Wonderful—A Life on the Prairie, recalling the beauty of the Kansas prairie when she first arrived while hinting at the storms and losses that followed.

In February 1932, Emily travels from her Kansas farm to Chicago to collect her orphaned niece, seven-year-old Dorothy. Emily's husband, Henry, has stayed behind on the farm. Emily's sister Annie and Annie's husband, John Gale, drowned in a boating accident on Lake Michigan, and Emily and Henry are now Dorothy's legal guardians. At Annie's South Shore row house, the Irish housekeeper Cora McNulty greets Emily. Annie's lingering presence in the house makes it difficult for Emily to accept she is gone. She finds Dorothy in the dayroom, singing an Irish lament; the child's resemblance to Annie is striking. Emily introduces herself as "Auntie Em" and tries to connect, but Dorothy is withdrawn.

That night, Emily hears Dorothy cry out from nightmares Cora calls "the black wind" and feels helpless. The next morning, Cora mentions Dorothy loves books and Irish stories, giving Emily a glimmer of hope but inadvertently touching on the painful subject of Emily and Henry's childlessness. At the attorney's office, Emily signs the guardianship papers and learns that John was bankrupt at the time of his death, leaving no inheritance for Dorothy. The attorney gives Emily a sealed letter Annie left for Dorothy, to be opened on her sixteenth birthday. Emily takes Dorothy to Rainbow Beach, where she and her sisters first stood as children newly arrived from Ireland, and promises to teach Dorothy Irish songs and fiddle.

The narrative shifts to November 1922, when Emily and Annie move into a Chicago boardinghouse. The sisters are Irish immigrants who came to America as young children with their parents and older sister, Nell. Nell has moved to California with her rancher husband, Bill Hugson, and both parents died during the influenza epidemic. Emily and Annie work at Marshall Field's department store, where Annie thrives but Emily feels restless. Among their mother's belongings, Emily finds a pamphlet about Kansas and Irish immigration that fueled their mother's dream of settling on the Great Plains. The sisters also unpack Annie's prized hourglass, a gift from Leonardo Stregone, a circus aerialist Annie fell in love with at Ringling's circus. Leonardo promised to return and marry Annie, but he disappeared during the war.

In January 1923, Emily meets Henry Gale at a dinner hosted by Annie's suitor, John Gale, Henry's older cousin. Henry is passionate about farming the Great Plains with modern machinery, and Emily is immediately drawn to him. Annie marries John quickly, though Emily senses her feelings lack the intensity of her love for Leonardo. That fall, Henry proposes and Emily accepts. They marry secretly, and when Emily tells Annie about the marriage and their plans for Kansas, Annie is hurt and furious. Annie reveals she is pregnant, so Emily agrees to stay until the baby arrives while Henry goes ahead.

That winter, Emily slips on ice and unknowingly suffers a miscarriage of a pregnancy she did not realize she had. When Annie goes into labor during a storm and the doctor cannot get through, Emily delivers the baby alone using her Red Cross training. The birth is dangerous, but Emily delivers a healthy girl Annie names Dorothy. Before handing the infant to her sister, Emily holds the child and feels an overwhelming bond. Later, she overhears Annie calling the baby "little Dorotea" and whispering about "your father's brave heart," and realizes that John is not Dorothy's biological father. Annie reunited with Leonardo. Emily leaves Chicago the next morning, locking the secret away, and boards the train to Kansas.

Emily arrives at Gale Farm in the spring of 1924 and falls in love with the prairie. She throws herself into farming, earns the respect of the local women, and joins a weekly supper club where she plays her father's fiddle. She tells Henry nothing about Annie's affair or her own miscarriage. Annie visits the farm once, and when Emily confronts her about Leonardo, Annie demands she never mention it again. Their relationship deteriorates into silence. Month after month, Emily meets each menstrual cycle with a mix of relief and regret, and she and Henry stop discussing children.

In August 1929, Emily discovers she is pregnant again as financial pressures deepen. That night, a tornado destroys their house and most of their crops. Emily tells Henry about the pregnancy amid the devastation, and he is overjoyed. Weeks later, the stock market crashes and their savings vanish. Emily suffers a second miscarriage alone and buries two pressed wildflowers behind the barn, one for each lost child.

The narrative returns to 1932. Emily sorts through Annie's belongings, keeping a tin man figurine their father made, Annie's hourglass, and a bundle of sealed birthday letters Annie wrote for Dorothy. When Emily gives Dorothy the figurine, the child finally says "Good night, Auntie Em," and Emily weeps for the first time since her sister's death. On the train to Kansas, she gives Dorothy her piece of Connemara marble, a green stone from her Irish grandmother, and feels deep foreboding despite her longing to return home.

At Gale Farm, Dorothy adjusts to prairie life amid worsening drought. Henry charms the child easily, while Emily feels inadequate. Dorothy's nightmares continue, and she begins sleepwalking. In frustration, Emily blurts out that she wishes Dorothy had never come, then immediately regrets the words. The couple reconciles, acknowledging they need each other. Their world brightens when Adelaide Watson, a barnstorming pilot and member of the Ninety-Nines aviation club, crash-lands her biplane in their field. Adelaide's confidence and spirit energize the household. Before departing to find a rainmaker, she takes Emily for a sunrise flight that leaves Emily feeling alive for the first time in years. A stray puppy arrives and Dorothy names him Toto. Emily begins teaching Dorothy the fiddle and sharing Irish stories, slowly opening herself to the child.

At the county fair, Dorothy mentions her mother's "special friend" who could do "real magic tricks," confirming that Annie maintained contact with Leonardo and that Dorothy knows him. Worried about the worsening dust and Dorothy's health, Emily writes to Nell suggesting the child might be safer in California.

Adelaide returns with the rainmaker, who turns out to be Leonardo himself. Dorothy greets him familiarly. Leonardo privately confirms to Emily that he knows Dorothy is his daughter and that he visited Annie and the child annually. He performs a dramatic but fraudulent rainmaking demonstration, briefly uniting the town in hope. When Adelaide warns Emily that Leonardo is deliberately stalling his departure, Emily catches him trying to steal Annie's emerald ring. She confronts him, tells him there is no money, and declares Dorothy belongs with her and Henry. Leonardo concedes, admitting he was never brave enough to be a father, and agrees to leave.

Days later, a catastrophic black blizzard strikes while Dorothy is at the creek checking a rain catcher Leonardo told her to monitor. The storm forces Emily and Henry into the cellar. Afterward, Henry finds Dorothy sheltering in an old dugout, guided by Toto's barking. The child is alive but desperately ill with dust pneumonia. Emily maintains a hospital vigil, reading from her prairie journal and singing through days of fever. She realizes home is not a place but wherever Dorothy is. Adelaide keeps Emily company and shares her own painful secret: Her brother Cooper died in a flying accident during a stunt Adelaide pushed for, which is why she flies solo. Dorothy's fever breaks, and she tells Emily about a dream in which everyone she loved appeared and all she wanted was to come home.

Emily, Henry, and Dorothy prepare to leave Kansas for Nell's ranch in California. Behind the barn, Emily and Henry visit the mound of earth where they buried memories of their lost children, and Emily shares her mother's words: A heart is the very best home of all. Henry gives Emily a sealed envelope Leonardo left for Dorothy. Dorothy buries the Connemara marble in the Kansas dirt, hoping it will turn the prairie green. Adelaide departs at first light, leaving notes for Emily and Dorothy. As the family drives west, Emily holds her father's fiddle and looks back once at Kansas before turning toward the road ahead.

In an epilogue narrated by Dorothy years later, she reveals that rain returned to Kansas after seven years and that she went back to see the prairie bloom. Emily told Henry everything about Leonardo after the dust storm; he was hurt but understood, and they hid nothing from each other afterward. On her sixteenth birthday, Dorothy received the birthday letters, some from Annie and some from Emily, and learned the truth about Leonardo from Annie's final letter. Emily turned her prairie journal into a published memoir at Nell's encouragement. Dorothy closes by calling Emily her "sun, moon, north star," her home, affirming the novel's central truth: Home is not a place but wherever there is love.