Review: The Lark by Laura C. Rader
The Lark by Laura C. Rader Blurb: When The Wizard of Oz graced the silver screen in 1939, it changed cinema and popular culture forever. But the true story began decades earlier with the young composer who risked everything to bring it to the Broadway stage. At the turn of the century, twenty-three-year-old Paul Tietjens is a gifted classical pianist with dreams of greatness and a non-refundable ticket to Europe to study with the master composers of his time. But when the bank calls in the debt on his family’s Missouri farm, Paul forgoes his dream to save them from financial ruin. Desperate to find a new road to success, he moves to up-and-coming Chicago, where he persuades author L. Frank Baum to collaborate on a comic opera of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz , setting the stage for the defining cultural touchstone that we know today. Paul embarks on his opera with high hopes, but scandal threatens his soaring ambition when he falls in love with his best friend’s beautiful but married sis...
