Our Pick for February 2009

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

This month we’re talking about Loving Frank.  It’s a fictional account of Frank Lloyd Wright’s tragic love affair with Mamah Cheney. The book is very well researched but is fictionalized so that the author would have the freedom to invent the personal details of the relationship that will never be known.

I have always loved Frank Lloyd Wright’s design aesthetic and so that made me curious about the man.  The book does not paint him in the best light, but I think I tended to want to give him a pass because he’s Frank Lloyd Wright.   When my local book club discussed the book,  many of the women were very upset with Mamah for the way she handled (or didn’t) her children, but as a single mom with many career aspirations, I felt sort of sympathetic towards her as well.  Most of the time.  It’s a tragic story of course and interesting to think about how different it would have been if it were happening now.  What did you think of the book?