Author: Nancy Horan
Publication date: 2007
I wasn't eager to complete this challenge. Particularly when my hope to use "The Princess Bride" was thwarted by my friends who insisted Humperdink didn't love anyone. I settled on Loving Frank because I'd purchased it a few years back as, you guessed it, a Kindle Daily Deal.
Loving Frank is the fictionalized story of the real love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and his one-time client Mrs. Edwin Cheney, also known as Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Both abandoned their families (spouses and young children) to carry on a love affair across three continents.
Author Nancy Horan does an admirable job of getting into the psyche of Borthwick. Her telling of the story does bring to life the issues of the day. While I'd known Wright had carried on a years-long affair, I really knew very little of his life. Much to my surprise, the Chicago newspapers covered the scandal of the affair in depth so Horan had newspaper accounts from which to draw her story.
Two years in a child's life is the distance between stars, she thought.
Cheney did abandon her children for two years. Not just leave the household but the continent moving to Europe with Wright and later on her own to pursue a career as a translator for Ellen Key, a well-known European feminist whom she had befriended.
It is likely that I would never have loved this book. I admire the author's telling of the story. In fact, I think she did a phenomenal job. But I just can't feel sympathetic for characters like Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright, who believed his own genius and happiness were more important than all else -- including his own children.
My reading of this book should be captioned "bad things happen to readers who Google." My unquenchable desire to know all things drove me to read up on Frank Lloyd Wright's life on the internet. As I said, bad things happened ... If you are inclined to read Loving Frank, don't go Googling on your own. Being spoiled on the outcome of this affair truly made it difficult to get through the story.
Next challenge: A banned book
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