The concept of WAS is an adult parallel to the magical Land of Oz, that never existed as a real place. Instead, the novel explores the tragic, but very moving life of ``Dorothy Gael'' in 1800s Kansas, whose traumatic experiences with Aunt Emily and Uncle Henry after _her_ mother's death lead her to create an imaginary and idealized world in her mind based on some of her real-life experiences as a way of coping with her bleak reality. <sep>, Pronoun: her <sep>, A: Dorothy Gael <sep>, B: Aunt Emily