Year in (Book) Review: Loving Frank

My first book of 2010 is a "creative non-fiction" piece written by first-time author Nancy Horan. In essence, she learns all the facts she can about the lives, times, and surroundings of her main characters -- in this case, famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his lover Mamah Borthwick Cheney -- and then fills in the holes with color and imagination and good guessing.
Given to me as a Christmas gift, Loving Frank is probably not something that I would have pulled off the shelf myself. I'm familiar with Mr. Wright of course, but not overly enraptured with the principles of architecture or the idea of trying to decide, as I read, what is real and what is make-believe.
It was a lovely, unexpectedly enjoyable surprise. (Thank you, Cindy, and by extension Barb Vogel, for the recommendation and the gift.)
Loving Frank tells the story of a young (by today's standards, although decidedly middle-aged in her time) and married mother, Mrs. Cheney, and how her decision, if you want to call it that, to share her life with also-married father Frank Wright impacted a multitude of lives.
It took a few pages, a few chapters perhaps, before I fell into the slow rhythm of author Horan's narrative. But it was impossible not to get drawn into the exceptional woman she brings to her readers. Mamah, by all accounts, defied every expectation of her. And not in a good way, many would probably say. She married rather late (after 30), was highly educated (a Master's degree and mastery of several languages) and a suffragist, and ultimately left her home, her husband, and her children to follow her heart to Europe after beginning an affair with the not-yet legendary neighbor and designer of her family's home. I found myself, more and more, wanting to have a drink with her.
We meet Mr. Wright as Mrs. Cheney does, in early 1903, already itching to be a bigger presence in the world than life in Oak Park, Illinois will allow. Both unhappy with their marriages and enthralled by what they see in one another, the affair flourishes quickly and deeply.
The decisions they make from that point forward have a rippling effect on everyone in their lives, not only their heartbroken spouses and nine (yep, nine) children but their extended families, the scandalized neighbors, and the co-workers eager to be a part of the emerging fame but hesitant to get drawn in to the surrounding hailstorm. Yet their conviction to one another, to their principles and beliefs, and perhaps most importantly to themselves, drives them forward and binds them all the more tightly together.
He can't have been an easy person to love. She can't have been as pious and pleasing as she is romanticized by her biographer. But they are charming and passionate, accessible and relatable, and unmistakably in love. And that makes it easy for readers to feel empathy for them, to feel ourselves in their place perhaps.
And it makes the conclusion of the story all that much more jarring when it hits, in the final pages of Horan's novel. I knew nothing of the history. If you're unaware and planning to read the book, I recommend not doing any research first, if only to get the full impact of the reading experience. It's wrenching and totally unexpected, the kind of unexpected that makes you re-read paragraphs because the facts are upon you before you can really process them. (I had to get up out of bed and Google the situation tomake sure Ms. Horan wasn't faking me out for shock factor. She, horribly, was not.)
I genuinely recommend exploring this relatively undocumented piece of American history.
(If you're like me and like to be able to picture what the author is describing (when it's real, of course), visit here for a photographic tour of Taliesin, the Wisconsin home Frank built for Mamah.) (And if you're not like me and you just have to know the full story before, well, before you read the story, here's some info on Mamah. Don't do it, I'm telling you. Wait for it.)