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Loving Frank: A Novel | 
 enlarge | Author: Nancy Horan
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.00
Buy New: $7.67
You Save: $6.33 (45%)
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Rating:  142 reviews
Sales Rank: 41
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 400
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.8 x 5.2 x 0.9
ISBN: 0345495004
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.6
EAN: 9780345495006
ASIN: 0345495004
Publication Date: April 8, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Condition: **brand new, can't ship to HI, AK, or NY**
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Amazon.com
Amazon Significant Seven, August 2007: It's a rare treasure to find a historically imagined novel that is at once fully versed in the facts and unafraid of weaving those truths into a story that dares to explore the unanswered questions. Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney's love story is--as many early reviews of Loving Frank have noted--little-known and often dismissed as scandal. In Nancy Horan's skillful hands, however, what you get is two fully realized people, entirely, irrepressibly, in love. Together, Frank and Mamah are a wholly modern portrait, and while you can easily imagine them in the here and now, it's their presence in the world of early 20th century America that shades how authentic and, ultimately, tragic their story is. Mamah's bright, earnest spirit is particularly tender in the context of her time and place, which afforded her little opportunity to realize the intellectual life for which she yearned. Loving Frank is a remarkable literary achievement, tenderly acute and even-handed in even the most heartbreaking moments, and an auspicious debut from a writer to watch. --Anne Bartholomew
Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 137 more reviews...
Loving Frank at the expense of everyone else... August 19, 2008
Having visited the Frank Lloyd Wright Home & Studio in Oak Park on vacation a few years ago, I was familiar with the tragic end of Frank and Mamah's relationship. I was delighted to find this book that might explain the story in an interesting way. While not giving any particular insight into Frank Lloyd Wright's intentions and feelings, the author Nancy Horan wrote a strong novel about Mamah's.
This book is well written, and Horan delved into Mamah's feminists beliefs and work. But the middle of the book, centered around her work with feminist Ellen Key, was the least interesting to me. It felt like Horan was trying to explain Mamah's abandonment of her children by illustrating how `forward thinking' she was. I couldn't buy it. This is not a complaint about the author or the book, but I could never understand how Mamah could walk away from her kids, and found it hard to suspend my judgement. In any case, this book is interesting enough to be recommended. Read it, and see what you think of Mamah.
 Loving Frank is a book to love August 17, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This book is incredible! The research it took writer Nancy Horan before writing this book is immense. The detail, discriptions, observations and love of Frank resonates on many levels in this truly great book. It is a tragic and wonderful love story and an important part of American history.
lLoving Frank: A Novel
Great read. August 16, 2008
I enjoyed this book immensely. I hope Ms. Horan continues to write about strong women in recent US history.
Loving Frank August 15, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Book was in excellent condition, can't say I exactly enjoyed the content, but I always order book club selections from Amazon easy ,fast
Loving Mamah.... August 14, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
While I really enjoyed this novel and was captivated by the romance between Mamah and Frank Lloyd Wright in the first few years of the 20th Century, I really LOVED Mamah's character and found her extremely relatable, complex and indeed a woman ahead of her time. Her only condition/vice/weakness was her love for a man not her husband, for which her society shunned her, and perhaps rightly so.
What bothered me about Mamah's character was the ease with which she abandon her children for her own romantic happiness, something I personally find so hard to imagine. However, despite my inabiltiy to comprehend this aspect of her character, I still had enormous respect for her as a woman, admired her lifestyle, and continued to "root for her" throughout the novel.
While some will argue that Mamah was the love of Frank's life, I never truly felt his love for her came close to hers for him. It is true he abandoned his wife and their children to live with Mamah in Talesin, however, I believe even if Mamah never come along, his journey may have led him to live apart from them nonetheless. Frank seemed, from this novel, a man obsessed with his work, his ideals, and his idea of truth (despite his affair), all of which he valued above his love for Mamah. While there is no doubt they were in love, it seemed (as the name of the novel suggests) that this is really Mamah's story of loving Frank, more than a love of equality or of her being the love of his life.
I HIGHLY recommend this novel and know avid readers will welcome and love this novel.
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