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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.
Advance praise for Loving Frank:
“Loving Frank is one of those novels that takes over your life. It’s mesmerizing and fascinating–filled with complex characters, deep passions, tactile descriptions of astonishing architecture, and the colorful immediacy of daily life a hundred years ago–all gathered into a story that unfolds with riveting urgency.”
–Lauren Belfer, author of City of Light
“This graceful, assured first novel tells the remarkable story of the long-lived affair between Frank Lloyd Wright, a passionate and impossible figure, and Mamah Cheney, a married woman whom Wright beguiled and led beyond the restraint of convention. It is engrossing, provocative reading.”
——Scott Turow
“It takes great courage to write a novel about historical people, and in particular to give voice to someone as mythic as Frank Lloyd Wright. This beautifully written novel about Mamah Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair is vivid and intelligent, unsentimental and compassionate.”
——Jane Hamilton
“I admire this novel, adore this novel, for so many reasons: The intelligence and lyricism of the prose. The attention to period detail. The epic proportions of this most fascinating love story. Mamah Cheney has been in my head and heart and soul since reading this book; I doubt she’ll ever leave.”
–Elizabeth Berg
From the Hardcover edition. Amazon.com: 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
Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-05
Gives a Voice to the Voiceless
Thank you Ms. Horan for writing a book about a woman who never got a chance to tell her side of the story. Mamah and Frank are both presented as multi-dimensional characters and their relationship is neither romanticized nor condemned. Rating:
Date: 2008-07-04
good book club choice
I lead the discussion for this book at my book club. All members enjoyed the book and much of the discussion centered on feminism and the Woman Movement. We thought it was a well-written first novel for Ms. Horan and that she did a good job of blending history and fiction. We felt the author helped us to understand Mamah's personal struggle and the motivation for her decisions, even if we didn't agree with them. Rating: 
Date: 2008-07-03
art meets love
Although I found at times this book could drag on with details, I learned quite a bit about the prairie style and Frank Lloyd Wright's brilliant architecture. The romance kept the pages turning as I knew something big was bound to happen. Maybe it could've happened 50 pages earlier! I've lived in Chicago for 20 years and have never visited or wanted to visit Oak Park to see his home, but this book has inspired me greatly. Although the affair was illicit and "breaking all the rules", it amazed me how complete this couple made one another.
My book club is planning an outing to Oak Park and I can't wait to walk where these fascinating people once walked.
Rating:
Date: 2008-07-01
Excellent read
Very interesting read pretty much from start to finish. The book doesn't concentrate primarily on Frank Lloyd Wright's architecture/design, but it does give an interesting perspective into his daily life and turmoils surrounding his work.
A little slow at parts, but nothing that terribly distracts from the book as a whole. Overall, a great read! Rating: 
Date: 2008-06-26
Romantic Drivel
It is hard for me to imagine that I read the same book as the other reviewers. Perhaps I didn't, since even though it is against my religion to not finish a book once I have started, I just could not make myself trudge through more than half. I should get a medal for that accomplishment. The writing was barely half a notch above bodice-ripper level, and the author managed to miss all the complexity and nuance for which Wright is known. Talk about dumbed-down! She took really interesting lives and a fascinating relationship and turned them into cartoons. First I was disappointed, now I am ticked off. I'm sorry I wasted my time. Unless you are looking for formulaic, romantic fluff, mediocre writing and one-dimensional characters who don't have the slightest relationship to their real name-sakes, save yours and read something else. |
