Loving Frank by Nancy Horan (Ballantine Books, 2008).
Mamah Bothwick Cheney is an educated but unfulfilled mother and housewife living in early-20th century Oak Park, Illinois, when she meets and begins a romantic affair with the brilliant and legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. At the expense of their marriages and families, they run off to Europe together and return to The States to commence a bucolic life, co-habitating “in sin” among the isolated fields of Wisconsin where Frank designs an idyllic farming homestead just for them called Taliesin. While this historical novel provides insights into the eccentric characters of both protagonists – they are “alive. Together” -- it is difficult for the reader to summon sympathy for their much-maligned and exposed romance because they’re unbearably narcissistic and comfortably privileged as each constantly indulges his and her artistic and intellectual whims, so that there is no preparation for the final, climaxing tragedy of the story (7/10).
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