Skip to main content

A Hundred Magical Reasons Book Group Resources - Laura DeNooyer Author - Standout Stories

Janie, one of two main characters in A Hundred Magical Reasons, is a little girl living in the early 1900s with rigid, unimaginative parents and a secret friendship with a family who brings wonder and care into her love-starved soul.

Carrie comes from a restrictive family too, and she graduates from Calvin College in 1980 with a secret dream to open a literary cafe infused with bookish whimsy.

When Janie, now elderly and going by a different name, seems to pluck Carrie at random from the sidewalk to be her personal assistant, their lives become intertwined. As the summer progresses, the older woman slowly reveals her long-ago friendship with L. Frank Baum, formed when he, his wife, Maud, and their sons vacationed each year at a summer home on Lake Macatawa in Holland, Mich.

Like Janie and Carrie, author Laura DeNooyer has deep ties to the Christian Reformed Church and to the Lake Macatawa area. The author grew up attending Battle Creek (Mich.) CRC, graduated from Calvin College (now Calvin University), and spent her summers vacationing at a family cottage on Lake Macatawa. Her interest in Baum began early: “I loved the movie The Wizard of Oz,” DeNooyer said in an interview. “I didn’t understand how television worked. I thought it was a reenactment of some kind. One day Judy (Garland) will be too old to play Dorothy, and I will take her place, I thought.” A few years ago, her interest in Baum was rekindled when her family sent her on a treasure hunt. “The last stop was a used bookstore,” she said. “There I found a bio of L. Frank Baum, and I was smitten.”

Anyone who reads DeNooyer’s book will be equally taken with the delightful Baum, who is depicted as a loving family man with a huge heart and an even larger imagination. Whether he was a Christian is debated, but Baum shows love, grace, and kindness to Janie, even when her Christian parents are joyless and harsh.

One of the book’s themes is grace versus legalism, and its Christian Reformed characters illustrate both sides of the spectrum.

“I know a lot of Christian families who use criticism as their main parenting tool,” DeNooyer said. But for Baum, one of the most Christ-like figures in the book, the author drew from the well of God’s mercy toward all creation. “I like the theme of common grace,” she explains. “God blesses us in many places and in many ways.”

For A Hundred Magical Reasons, her second book, DeNooyer immersed herself in all things Baum, visiting some of his homesites and the tiny Oz museum in Kansas. She returned to her family’s cottage on Lake Macatawa trying to see it through Baum’s eyes.

Baum bought his lake house, called The Sign of the Goose, with proceeds from his book Father Goose: His Book. Baum spent at least 10 summers there racing boats, swimming with his boys, and writing some of his Oz books. “Baum considered Macatawa a fairyland, a paradise, and a summer haven—the perfect place for ‘a dose of ozone,’” DeNooyer said, quoting Baum. The home burned down in the Macatawa fires of 1927.

DeNooyer researched her book meticulously, consulting several Baum/Oz scholars and even Baum’s great-granddaughter, Gita Dorothy Morena, who “loved how Baum was portrayed in a factually correct way.”

The book has already received multiple awards, including the Hawthorne Prize for Fiction, first place in The BookFest for literary historical fiction, and a bronze Illumination Book Award for general fiction.

DeNooyer hopes readers will dive with her into the Lake Macatawa of the past and especially into the ideas of self-discovery, openheartedness, and God’s boundless grace.

She invites fans of The Wizard of Oz to walk in the sandy footsteps of a loving, though flawed, man whose imagination continues to capture ours through the original Oz books and retellings or spinoffs of his stories. “(Baum) might appreciate and applaud the ingenuity of Wicked (the smash hit musical and movie about the Wicked Witch of the West’s backstory with Glinda the Good Witch) and be flattered that artists, writers, and filmmakers are still using his source material,” she said, “but he might bristle at the deviations from his own Oz series and backstories of characters.”

DeNooyer’s own novel began with her own spark of imagination: “I had this picture of a young woman walking down the street, and then an old lady asks her to water her flowers.”

Readers can learn more about Baum, Oz, and DeNooyer’s work at LauraDeNooyer-author.com, where they can find book club questions, a playlist of 1970s soft rock Carrie’s coffee shop singer friend might perform, and Oz-related recipes to accompany her book.

 

 

The Lowdown

Dim Sum and Faith: Imagine gathering around a dim sum table, a lively setting where stories and heartfelt moments are shared over flavorful bites. Drawing from her own rich tapestry of experiences, Jenn Suen Chen helps readers explore how our personal narratives shape our spiritual journeys. (IVP)

Jurassic World Rebirth: Five years after Jurassic World Dominion, Earth’s ecology has proven largely inhospitable to dinosaurs. Those remaining exist in isolated equatorial environments with climates resembling the one in which they once thrived. Within those tropical biospheres, the three most colossal creatures across land, sea, and air hold in their DNA the key to a drug that could bring life-saving benefits to humankind. (Rated PG-13. In theaters July 2)

Book of Joshua: Walls of Jericho: In this animated feature film, after 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Israelites stand at the threshold of the Promised Land under Joshua’s leadership. (Fandango at Home)

A Book Spinoff of The Chosen TV Series: The Chosen: Not My Will, by Jerry Jenkins, takes readers on a speculative journey deeper into the hearts and minds of the show’s many intriguing characters, such as Mary Magdalene, Pontius Pilate and his wife Claudia, and Judas. (July 1, Broadstreet)

We Are Counting on You

The Banner is more than a magazine; it’s a ministry that impacts lives and connects us all. Your gift helps provide this important denominational gathering space for every person and family in the CRC.

Give Now

X