I suppose as a writer I feel a little bit like a snoop, a spy, constantly looking over the shoulder of my old friends from childhood, those Yellow Brick Road irregulars, and trying to see what they're really up to.

In A Lion Among Men, Volume Three in the Wicked Years, I take a gander at the personality of the so-called Cowardly Lion. He is named Brrr, a word that is both a shiver and also a tip of the hat to Bert Lahr's unforgettable interpretation of the Lion as a sort of prissy New Yawkah stevedore.

Brrr's life story is more of a ramble than some-ad hoc, arbitrary even-as befits the skittish instincts of an animal. Like most of us, he runs toward and away from commitment at the same time. His involvement in that little Matter of Dorothy provides him a chance for rehabilitation in the eyes of Oz, but he blows it. He has one final opportunity to salvage his reputation and his freedom-if he accepts the task of finding and interviewing the mysterious oracle named Yackle before she passes away- and in the pursuit of this Brrr helps Yackle learn more of her own character, so she might finally escape the prison of being unable to die.

Every time I go back to Oz to write about it again (like Lawrence Durrell in the Alexandria Quartet), I see the old story from fresh angles. We can never unknot the riddles of our own character, nor should we stop trying. What is A Lion Among Men about, plot and characterizations aside? I think it is about the task (each of us faces it) of trying to become agents of change in our own spheres of influence-trying not to be crushed by all that we inherit, trying to sidestep the fate that chromosomes, history, early influences, and our own sorely beaten natures lay out for us.

If time and fortune allow, I hope to make at least one more fictional venture to Oz in a year or two (or three), to learn more of the story of those brave and ornery folks of Oz, and in the bargain perhaps to learn a little more about myself as well.

Thank you for coming on this journey. Wear stout shoes: the Munchkins haven't been reliable in the upkeep of the Yellow Brick Road.