Loving Frank: A Novel - Dark Publications

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Amazon.com Review
Amazon Significant Seven, August 2007: It's a rare treasure to find a historically imagined novel that is at once fully versed in the facts and unafraid of weaving those truths into a story that dares to explore the unanswered questions. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney's love story is--as many early reviews of Loving Frank have noted--little-known and often dismissed as scandal. In Nancy Horan's skillful hands, however, what you get is two fully realized people, entirely, irrepressibly, in love. Together, Frank and Mamah are a wholly modern portrait, and while you can easily imagine them in the here and now, it's their presence in the world of early 20th century America that shades how authentic and, ultimately, tragic their story is. Mamah's bright, earnest spirit is particularly tender in the context of her time and place, which afforded her little opportunity to realize the intellectual life for which she yearned. Loving Frank is a remarkable literary achievement, tenderly acute and even-handed in even the most heartbreaking moments, and an auspicious debut from a writer to watch. --Anne Bartholomew

Product Description

I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by. I want to swim in the river. I want to feel the current.

So writes Mamah Borthwick Cheney in her diary as she struggles to justify her clandestine love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright. Four years earlier, in 1903, Mamah and her husband, Edwin, had commissioned the renowned architect to design a new home for them. During the construction of the house, a powerful attraction developed between Mamah and Frank, and in time the lovers, each married with children, embarked on a course that would shock Chicago society and forever change their lives.

In this ambitious debut novel, fact and fiction blend together brilliantly. While scholars have largely relegated Mamah to a footnote in the life of America's greatest architect, author Nancy Horan gives full weight to their dramatic love story and illuminates Cheney's profound influence on Wright.

Drawing on years of research, Horan weaves little-known facts into a compelling narrative, vividly portraying the conflicts and struggles of a woman forced to choose between the roles of mother, wife, lover, and intellectual. Horan's Mamah is a woman seeking to find her own place, her own creative calling in the world. Mamah's is an unforgettable journey marked by choices that reshape her notions of love and responsibility, leading inexorably ultimately lead to this novel's stunning conclusion.

Elegantly written and remarkably rich in detail, Loving Frank is a fitting tribute to a courageous woman, a national icon, and their timeless love story.

From the Hardcover edition.

Customer Reviews: Read 186 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Fascinating look at the internal life of Wright and his lover September 11, 2007
143 out of 159 found this review helpful

I have studied the work and bio of Frank Lloyd Wright for many years, even traveling to his Western headquarters, Taliesen West, and touring homes he built in four cities. I was well aware of his strengths and faults, but little has been published about the women in his wife, other than his domineering, smothering mother and his strident, domineering third (and last) wife. (I'm counting Mamah Borthwick, his lover for about a half-dozen years, as a second wife, since they would have married if his first wife had granted him a divorce; he and Borthwick lived together for several years).

Wright's towering ego is well known and well documented. By choosing to look at Wright and his work through the eyes of Mamah, his lover, in this fictionalized historical tale, Horan brings new insight into the demons and angels that inspired his vision. Wright's well-documented narcissism and inability to control himself personally is examined as well, but not as the fatal flaws offered by most biographers, but as components of an immensely complex and genius personality.

Mamah's (first) husband was first to see Wright's vision but Mamah was the one to embrace it wholly as Wright set about building them a home in Oak Park, not far from his own house. Wright was a star on the rise at that time, accepting commissions almost faster than he could manage them, but the affair he and Mamah embarked upon, which caused her to abandon her children, led to considerable scandal and major setbacks to his business.

Mamah was a recognized scholar and intellect until she was subsumed into a loveless marriage by the conventions of the time. In Wright she found the outlet for her passions and the independence she longed for, and the support and acceptance to rebuild her professional life, which became linked with that of the feminist Swedish scholar Ellen Keyes. Mamah's story, and that of the feminists of her time, is largely lost to history, and for reminding us of those seminal and important figures alone Horan deserves a deep bow.

Horan's work also exumes many litle-known facts about Wright and his times: his love for rural Wisconsin, where he grew up; his fascination with Japan and business in buying and selling Japanese antiguities; and his admiration for the classic Tuscan homes of northern Italy. As this book documents the times in which Wright was shaping his own vision with the help and guidance of Mamah, we can better understand the architecture for which he became so famous.

For those familiar with Wrights biography, the tragic end to his and mamah's affair is well known. For others, it will come as a shock. Horan is simply masterful in describing the events as they must have occurred.

I enjoyed the book tremendously, but I have one major quibble: Horan offers little documentation for her narrative for the reader who might want to learn as much as she does. As one generally familiar with the story I find it authemtic, but an appendix elaborating on the sources Horan used would add to the book's credibility.

5 out of 5 stars

Astonishingly fresh and riveting novel August 7, 2007
128 out of 159 found this review helpful

No matter your allegiance to the narcissistic genius who was Frank Lloyd Wright, it is Mamah Cheney who will mesmerize you with her intelligence, sensitivity and straightforward innocence. To dare to write such a complicated true story and to succeed so masterfully is a feat few authors can achieve. Nancy Horan is a remarkably gifted writer who brings you close to the complex love affair between Mamah and Frank and grips you with her elqouent prose. I have not enjoyed a book as much in a very long time. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to dive into an extremely satisfying novel and not emerge from its spell until you turn the last page.

5 out of 5 stars

Best Debut novel I have read August 12, 2007
69 out of 73 found this review helpful

I gave this Debut effort by Nancy Horan a try because of A life long interest in Frank Lloyd Wright (for more on Mr. Wright's life I recommend Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright). This ambitious work is a fictional accounting of the life of Mamah Cheney. After being hired by Cheney's husband to design a family home, Wright had a scandalous affair With Mrs. Cheney that wrecked both their marriages. This might seem like the plot of a romance novel, but believe me this book is not a romance novel! Cheney is portrayed as an educated woman struggling with her independence against the conventions of a time period when woman were for bearing children and keeping the home fires burning--to be seen but not heard!

Frank and Mamah both leave their respective families to live together and travel the world, then eventually settle in Wisconsin. Wright's bigger than life personality is adequately displayed by the author, but the real story here is Maham who lost much in her quest for self realization and also in perusing her love for Wright. Her life is tragically cut short which makes for a difficult ending, still reading about this amazing woman, who was a head of her time makes for fascinating reading. Speaking of great 20th century historical fiction do check out "Misfits Country" for a searing look into the lives of Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift.

2 out of 5 stars

Ones need to fulfill intellectual and physical desires trumps matrimonial and maternal responsibilities December 17, 2007
49 out of 67 found this review helpful

seems to be the mantra of Mamah Borthwick, linguist, intellectual, translator, wife, mother of two, and mistress of Frank Lloyd Wright. The author created this work of fiction by piecing together historical facts from newspaper articles, the writings of Mr. Wright (on architecture), and of Ms. Borthwick (translations of Swedish feminist Ellen Key's works) as well as the content of ten letters written by Borthwick to Key. Although there is little to complain about in the writing save a few cliches: Maymah's thoughts about Frank (p 25), "I am putty in your hands, so quickly," feelings about him (p 34), "She loved him with every cell in her body," and Frank's words to her (p 128), "You make me want to be a better man," Maymah's thoughts and actions are so self-centered and self-serving that this book reads like one long lesson on the consequences of a life selfishly-lived. In one of few moments of clarity, she wonders how she has become so accepting of her own improper behavior considering (p 32), "She had always thought herself a deeply moral person," yet agrees with a passage of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's (p 33), "It is not sufficient to be a mother; an oyster can be a mother." Her disdain for motherhood comes in spite of the fact that her children are cared for by a nanny, so much so that when her daughter becomes sick during a train trip, she thinks (p 58) "What would Louise do?" The book jacket states that she is "forced to choose between the roles of a mother, wife, lover and intellectual." She chooses the roles of lover and intellectual, and abandons her three-year-old daughter and almost seven-year-old son at a friend's house with whom they've been visiting, to be with Wright, telling the children (p 83), "I'm going on a small vacation...One just for me." The children don't see their mother again for two years. She ponders explaining her choice to her children as (p 140) "not...a cruel self-indulgence" but "an act of love for life" and believes that the kids might end up "...better off, with four happy parents." Late in the novel after a fight with Wright, she tells him (p 302), "The children are what matters now." Yeah, right. What transpires during the children's next visit to Mamah's and Frank's home, Taliesin, may never had happened had she made different choices. This story of a woman who chooses fling over family is, frankly, fluff. Better: Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracy Kidder, There is No Me Without You by Melissa Fay Greene and Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin.

5 out of 5 stars

The compelling tale of The Other Woman October 22, 2007
42 out of 58 found this review helpful

It happens every day: two individuals fall in love, though each is married to another. Secrets are discovered, lives change, families are broken apart. But when one of the two is a local celebrity, the affair also makes daily headlines. What must Life be like when you are true to your heart, but the whole world seems to be conspiring against you and your partner? Why must your every move be broadcast to the American public?

This fictionalized account -- for we'll never know the complete real-life particulars -- documents the relationship of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah is a dutiful wife and mother of two, a University of Michigan graduate and a socially active and intelligent woman. When she and her husband decide to build their own house in Oak Park, Illinois, they hire local architect Frank Wright to design their prairie-style home. In the process, Mamah and Frank begin to spend time together, sharing meaningful conversations that turn into something quite different. Frank is married and has six children of his own, and his wife refuses to grant him a divorce. The two lovers travel to Europe and eventually return to settle down near Wright's first home in Spring Green, Wisconsin. While Frank focuses on architecture, Mamah writes and translates Swedish feminist philosophy into American English. They see their children from time to time. Discounting some financial difficulties, they seem to have created an idyllic existence together. For a time.

I toured the Taliesin grounds (but not the residence) in Wisconsin, in the late 1990s. I vaguely remember being told about what happened there in 1914, but only in general terms. It's such a beautiful place -- too restful to be associated with such a horrible tragedy. Now that I have read "Loving Frank," I'd like to go back. That trip will be more contemplative than my initial visit was.

This is a powerful story, told in satisfying prose. Portions of this book will stay with me forever. Thank you, Ms. Horan, for your diligence in researching the details of this story and sharing them so astutely with us. We surely look forward to your next assignment!

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