What readers think of Loving Frank, plus links to write your own review.

A beautifully written story that I was totally unaware existed and formed Wright's early life. The relationship completely captured me.

Really enjoyed learning more about this time in history and some personal history about Frank Lloyd Wright. The ending is so powerful that weeks later, I am still thinking about this book.

From 1907 to 1914, Frank Lloyd Wright carried on a love affair with Mamah Borthwick Cheney. They were both married to others when the affair began and it caused a great scandal in Chicago as well as around the country. Having always been an admirer of Wright as an architect, I now know plenty about him as a person. He comes across as a hard man to be in love with. But for Mamah Cheney, a highly educated and extremely intelligent woman, he brought excitement, passion and a full life. She had married at the age of 29 to a man she did not love. Her husband was not a bad man, but motherhood and middle-class life turned out to be stifling for Mamah.

Nancy Horan did a fine job of telling this story. I was annoyed, as I always am, by dialogue that sounded modern. (I am pretty sure that people did not talk that way in the early 1900s.) But I was drawn into the story. In today's world, not many would be shocked by such an affair. Mamah would not have had the added battle of fighting the mores of the time, which also caused her children additional suffering. While in Europe with Frank, Mamah met Ellen Key, a famous Swedish feminist of the times and became her translator. Again this turned out to be a blessing and a curse. It was a very hard time to be a woman but despite all the grief and tragedy, it must have been thrilling as well.

I read a quote the other day that went something like, "Well behaved women do not make history." Mamah Borthwick Cheney was a very badly behaved woman of her day but contributed to changing history for women. I am glad her story has been told.

This is certainly one of the books that I have read recently that stays in the memory long after the last page has been turned. I think that Nancy Horan has done an outstanding job of placing the reader almost in attendance observing the wild and turbulent times that the relationship endured. As an architect I was intrigued by the fact that during the ten year affair Frank Llloyd Wright was so absorbed with Mrs. Cheney that he was sapped from producing much creative work. The relationship tended to form a breathing space between his famous prairie houses and his later much different work culminating with the Guggenheim Museum in New York. The suspense that the author subtly inserts into the final chapters is beautifully handled. I hope we will not have to wait another seven years before Nancy Horan publishes another book. I would love to see her convert the book Loving Frank to a screenplay

This was a great read!! The story and characters are engaging and the story is a nice mix of fact and fiction. It is the type of book you find yourself thinking about long after you have finished reading it. Highly recommended.