Craft Projects

Loving Frank A Novel

Loving Frank A Novel

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.

User Ratings and Reviews

2 Stars Don’t get the hype
I was very disappointed by this book. I read such glowing recommendations on here by the Editors and Readers and truly looked forward to reading it, but immediately had a bad taste in my mouth after the first chapter. I thought the writing was subpar, and not on the level that it has been placed by other critics and readers: with so many other well-written historical fiction in this category, I think this was a low point. I felt that Horan was attempting a portrait of Mamah Cheney that needed to be drawn, because there was so little known of her and her life, but I didn’t find it a loving one. I never felt like Mamah came to life to me, or any of the other characters being portrayed from what the author knew of their background. Mamah was drawn in an extremely unsympathetic light in my opinion, and despite the author’s constant reminders to the reader that she was an intelligent, strong woman: I didn’t believe it. She seemed to me like any other self-involved, bored egomaniac who is not feeling fulfilled in her own life and selfishly runs away from it to satisfy her own immediate needs. Her detachment from her family and her children was an especially polarizing trait, and she never seemed to care that she left her children for years without regular communication, to be with the man that she loved. It was only when Frank left her that she felt any remorse, and her husband’s constant patience and love for her seemed to have meant nothing in comparison to the excitement of being with a brilliant, famous man. These are all plot points that bothered me, but in addition I just felt that the writing in this book did not do an effective job of placing you in the time, the moment or in the character’s shoes to be lauded as much as it is, and I am confused by all the positive reviews. I had a difficult time getting through this book.

5 Stars Frank Lloyd Wright was creative in many ways!
This was a really enjoyable read, in fact it was hard to put down. Frank Lloyd Wright had a very interesting life. The rights of or lack of rights for married women were also explored in this historically based novel. This is a must read, especially if you have ties to Chicago.

5 Stars Great write!
Loving Frank is a combination between a historical fiction and a romance. It is based on the love affair that took place from 1907 to 1914 between the prominent architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his client, Mamah Borthwick.

Mamah Borthwick is a married woman when she starts her love affair with Wright.

Wright was hired by the Cheneys to design and build a house for them when he developed a relation with Mamah. Both Mamah and Frank ended up leaving their families and living together.

Mamah is described as an independent woman on a journey of self-discovery.

The writer depicts very realistic characters. This is a great write!

4 Stars must read
what a page turner…well written …not at all what we could imagine…truly a good book

4 Stars Frank Lloyd Wright
Interesting ingsight into the genius of the man who some consider one of the great architects of our time. Little has been written about his mistress, Mamah Borthwick who gave up husband and children to follow Wright in his pursuit of architectural perfection. Her pursuit of women’s

causes was equal to his pursuit of his new form of architecture. His ego was served by her attachment to his ideals and it was she who had to rein in his lack of fiscal respinsibility.

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