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Loving Frank

by Nancy Horan
Loving Frank

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Reading Group Guide
  • Read an Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780345495006
ISBN10: 0345495004
Condition: Standard


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1Hawthorne

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

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.

Review

"The novel has something for everyone — a romance, a history of architecture, and a philosophical and political debate on the role of women." Booklist

Review

"One of Horan's achievements is how effectively she intertwines Mamah's evolution with the era's social change." Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Review

"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

Review

"[A] complex tale of the love affair between two eccentric, intelligent and unforgettable characters." Rocky Mountain News

Review

"The first great mystery in this story is what made Frank and Mamah sever their family ties....Ms. Horan has the novelistic imagination to conjure the psychic storm clouds that arose, as well as the freak criminal outburst." Janet Maslin, New York Times

Review

"The plot, characters, and ideas meld into a novel that will be a treat for fans of historical fiction." Library Journal

Review

"[T]he perfect selection to jump-start some satisfyingly heated arguments within your book club." USA Today

Review

"[A] beautifully designed, innovative and noteworthy work of art in itself." Chicago Tribune

Review

"Horan excels at research, and does an admirable job of recreating the five or so years the two were together." Christian Science Monitor

Synopsis

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."


About the Author

Nancy Horan, a former journalist and longtime resident of Oak Park, Illinois, now lives and writes on an island in Puget Sound.

Reading Group Guide

Reader's Guide

1. Do you think that Mamah is right to leave her husband and children in order to pursue her personal growth and the relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright? Is she being selfish to put her own happiness and fulfillment first?

2. Why do you think the author, Nancy Horan, gave her novel the title Loving Frank? Does this title work against the feminist message of the novel? Is there a feminist message?

3. Do you think that a woman today who made the choices that Mamah makes would receive a more sympathetic or understanding hearing from the media and the general public?

4. If Mamah were alive today, would she be satisfied with the progress women have achieved or would she believe there was still a long way to go?

5. In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare writes, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments. Love is not love/That alters where it alteration finds. .." How does the relationship of Mamah and Frank bear out the sentiments of Shakespeare’s sonnet? What other famous love matches fill the bill?

6. Is Mamah’s story relevant to the women of today?

7. Is Frank Lloyd Wright an admirable figure in this novel? Would it change your opinion of him to know that he married twice more in his life?

8. What about Edwin Cheney, Mamah’s husband? Did he behave as you might have expected after learning of the affair between his wife and Wright?

9. Edwin’s philosophy of life and love might be summed up in the following words from the novel: "Tell her happiness is just practice. If she acted happy, she would be happy." Do you agree or disagree with this philosophy?

10. "Carved over Wright's fireplace in his Oak Park home are the words "Life is Truth." What do you think these words mean, and do Frank and Mamah live up to them?

11. Why do you think Horan chose to give her novel the epigraph from Goethe, "One lives but once in the world."?

12. When Mamah confesses her affair to her friend Mattie, Mattie demands, "What about duty? What about honor?" Discuss some of the different meanings that characters in the novel attach to these two words.

13. In analyzing the failure of the women’s movement to make more progress, Mamah says, "Yet women are part of the problem. We plan dinner parties and make flowers out of crepe paper. Too many of us make small lives for ourselves." Was this a valid criticism at the time, and is it one today?

14. Why does seeing a performance of the opera Mefistofele affect Mamah so strongly?

15. Why is Mamah's friendship with Else Lasker Schuler important in the book?

16. Ellen Key, the Swedish feminist whose work so profoundly influences Mamah, states at one point, "The very legitimate right of a free love can never be acceptable if it is enjoyed at the expense of maternal love." Do you agree?

17. Another of Ellen Key’s beliefs was that motherhood should be recompensed by the state. Do you think an idea like this could ever catch on in America? Why or why not?

18. Is there anything that Frank and Mamah could have done differently after their return to America that would have ameliorated the harsh welcome they received from the press? Have things changed very much in that regard today?

19. What part did racism play in Julian Carlton’s crime? Were his actions the product of pure insanity, or was he goaded into violence?


1. Do you think that Mamah is right to leave her husband and children in order to pursue her personal growth and the relationship with Frank Lloyd Wright? Is she being selfish to put her own happiness and fulfillment first?

2. Why do you think the author, Nancy Horan, gave her novel the title Loving Frank? Does this title work against the feminist message of the novel? Is there a feminist message?

3. Do you think that a woman today who made the choices that Mamah makes would receive a more sympathetic or understanding hearing from the media and the general public?

4. If Mamah were alive today, would she be satisfied with the progress women have achieved or would she believe there was still a long way to go?

5. In Sonnet 116, Shakespeare writes, "Let me not to the marriage of true minds/Admit impediments. Love is not love/That alters where it alteration finds. .." How does the relationship of Mamah and Frank bear out the sentiments of Shakespeares sonnet? What other famous love matches fill the bill?

6. Is Mamahs story relevant to the women of today?

7. Is Frank Lloyd Wright an admirable figure in this novel? Would it change your opinion of him to know that he married twice more in his life?

8. What about Edwin Cheney, Mamahs husband? Did he behave as you might have expected after learning of the affair between his wife and Wright?

9. Edwins philosophy of life and love might be summed up in the following words from the novel: "Tell her happiness is just practice. If she acted happy, she would be happy." Do you agree or disagree with this philosophy?

10. "Carved over Wright's fireplace in his Oak Park home are the words "Life is Truth." What do you think these words mean, and do Frank and Mamah live up to them?

11. Why do you think Horan chose to give her novel the epigraph from Goethe, "One lives but once in the world."?

12. When Mamah confesses her affair to her friend Mattie, Mattie demands, "What about duty? What about honor?" Discuss some of the different meanings that characters in the novel attach to these two words.

13. In analyzing the failure of the womens movement to make more progress, Mamah says, "Yet women are part of the problem. We plan dinner parties and make flowers out of crepe paper. Too many of us make small lives for ourselves." Was this a valid criticism at the time, and is it one today?

14. Why does seeing a performance of the opera Mefistofele affect Mamah so strongly?

15. Why is Mamah's friendship with Else Lasker Schuler important in the book?

16. Ellen Key, the Swedish feminist whose work so profoundly influences Mamah, states at one point, "The very legitimate right of a free love can never be acceptable if it is enjoyed at the expense of maternal love." Do you agree?

17. Another of Ellen Keys beliefs was that motherhood should be recompensed by the state. Do you think an idea like this could ever catch on in America? Why or why not?

18. Is there anything that Frank and Mamah could have done differently after their return to America that would have ameliorated the harsh welcome they received from the press? Have things changed very much in that regard today?

19. What part did racism play in Julian Carltons crime? Were his actions the product of pure insanity, or was he goaded into violence?


4.6 12

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Average customer rating 4.6 (12 comments)

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Buckeye girl , January 23, 2012
I really hadn't planned to read this book because I was not much interested in Frank Lloyd Wright's love life. A friend gave it to me after she had finished reading it. We didn't have time to discuss it because I was leaving town. As soon as I began reading, I became interested in the characters and the way their lives were affected by the social and moral constraints of their time. The dilemma faced by the woman who loved Frank resonates with women in our time, too. Choosing to leave her husband and children to follow a married lover and to seek self fulfillment through her own talents is both admirable and selfish, however liberated a woman may feel. The author has written a very perceptive fictional account of an actual relationship between Wright and his lover. Relying on publicly known facts about their time together, Horan has written a very credible account of two passionate flesh and blood characters whose defiance of the social norms of their day brought them joy but also much pain. Then, when things begin to resolve for them, tragedy strikes. A tragedy that remained in my thoughts long after I had finished the book because it had happened to very real people.

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Robert Boursaw , January 19, 2012
Wonderfully written. Nancy Horan takes you on an incredible journey.

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bkwrm , February 07, 2011 (view all comments by bkwrm)
This book is a wonderful glimpse into the life of Frank Lloyd Wright and his lover. Hard to believe they lived so long ago and dealt with issues still relevant today! The ending is horrifying especially since that part as well as the rest of the book is based on true events in their lives.

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Kelli m , January 01, 2011 (view all comments by Kelli m)
Fictional account of the true love of Frank Lloyd Wright - taken from factual events/letters, etc. Wonderful story.

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Kelly A , July 07, 2010 (view all comments by Kelly A)
A work of fiction that tantalizes by its basis on a real story and real people with an ending I did not see coming. And an illustration of how life can be so complicated and simple at the same time.

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lindsey beadle , August 29, 2009 (view all comments by lindsey beadle)
I thought I would pick up this book and be a little bored. I was wrong. I could barely put it down. If you are a mother, or have ever loved someone, or have ever been married, or are just female, I think at least some part of this will register with you. And it's great historical fiction. Really well written. And seems to be based as much as much truth as was available. Read it! I don't think you'll be disappointed.

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smithjes , March 01, 2009 (view all comments by smithjes)
Heart-breaking story of the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney. It's great to read if you're from Wisconsin or Illinois because there are several cities and projects mentioned. Or, if you have any interest in architecture or design. Or, if you just want to read an excellent story of historical fiction.

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i8pixistix , October 23, 2008 (view all comments by i8pixistix)
This is a beautiful and haunting story that evokes tremendous thoughtfulness and emotion - including a very surprise ending. The words and feeling will echo in my self long after reading the final page.

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Mara Cohn , October 09, 2008 (view all comments by Mara Cohn)
Our book club read this book and it was one of the only times that we unanimously loved a book. It is a fascinating account of the real-life affair of Frank Lloyd Wright told from his lover's point of view.

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LauraAdams , September 10, 2008 (view all comments by LauraAdams)
I really enjoyed "Loving Frank". It was interesting and dealt with many issues including women's rights, gender roles, feminism, adultery, divorce and the cost of pursuing one's happiness when doing so goes against the grain. It is fiction based upon history. I enjoyed learning more about the real life of the famous Frank Lloyd Wright and his mistress. The ending was sad but it was not fiction so there was not much the author could do about that. I was left interested in the characters after finishing the book and have since done some research of my own about their lives. I have found the book was true to every known fact that I found. I highly recommend this book.

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redrockbookworm , July 22, 2008 (view all comments by redrockbookworm)
Frank Lloyd Wright was, and is, considered by many to be an architectural visionary. His Prarie homes were organic in nature and designed to blend into the landscape rather than compete with it. Frank himself could hardly be considered as a man who "blended into the landscape" and his unconventional affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney, a married woman with two children, resulted in tragedy both personal and professional Author Nancy Horan's historical novel takes you into the lives and minds of this unusual couple and explores their relationship and its effect the people who loved them as well as those on the periphery of their passion. We are drawn into the inner thoughts of Mameh, an accomplished woman in her own right.....college graduate, fluent in several languages.....and her attempt to "stop standing on the side of life watching it float by" and instead "swim in the river and feel it's current". In an era when women were expected to quash any desire for personal growth and "act happy", Mameh's personal conflict forced her to make choices that provided temporary satisfaction, but were ultimately disasterous. Could it be that you, like me, will become so consumed by Horan's vivid portrayal of this couple that you will find yourself searching the internet for more information about "what happened after" Horan's tale ends.

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780345495006
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
04/08/2008
Publisher:
BALLANTINE BOOKS
Pages:
377
Height:
.85IN
Width:
5.24IN
Thickness:
1.00
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
2008
UPC Code:
2800345495008
Author:
Nancy Horan
Author:
Nancy Horan
Subject:
Love stories
Subject:
Biographical fiction
Subject:
Biographical
Subject:
General-General
Subject:
Wright, Frank Lloyd
Subject:
Architects
Subject:
General Fiction

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