Mix a brilliant, attractive and engaging architect - read Frank Lloyd Wright - with a beautiful, intelligent and feeling-trapped housewife and you have the basis for romantic combustion.

Loving Frank, by Nancy Horan, is the novelized biography of this very affair. In the early 1900's Frank Lloyd Wright was a confident but still relatively unknown architect. Hired by his good friends, the Cheneys, to design their family home, it isn't long before Mamah Cheney and Frank are caught up in a steamy affair. So passionate and scandalous is their relationship that they feel compelled to leave their families and run off to Europe. But this is no predictable tawdry affair.

Mamah Cheney is the driving force behind this story. As she struggles to reconcile her emotions of guilt and loss along with her intellectual restlessness, Mamah draws us in to her tempestuous relationship with Frank as well as a fascinating relationship with the leading feminist of the day.

Eventually, Frank and Mamah settle in Wisconsin. Frank's brilliance is constantly undermined by his own narcissistic behaviour, both of which influence and shape the life they have together. But there is no doubt about their commitment to each other, nor its endurance until an event too tragic to anticipate brings their relationship to an end.

This is Nancy Horan's first novel and it is an assured and smart debut. The writing is rich and the story beautifully and seamlessly blends both fact and fiction. A truly wonderful and engaging read.

I read this book for a book club meeting. While I admit that, at times, I was frustrated that the book was dragging on, it did keep me interested and towards the end, I could not put it down (but I'm not sure if that was because i wanted to finish reading it quickly). I felt as if the ending hit me like a ton of bricks - I wasn't expecting it at all.
Later, I was interested to learn that this story is loosely based on real-life events and like some other reviewers, I was fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright's architectural work as a result. When I am frustrated by characters in a story, I know that the book was well-written. Not a bad job for a debut novel from an author.

This book was intriguing in the beginning and then about 1/4 of the way in became frustrating and difficult to read. At some points I had to force myself to read the book. There were also points of the book that i was extremely frustrated with the story. I would never read this book again. Buy another book.

I gave this debut effort by Nancy Horan a try because of A life long interest in Frank Lloyd Wright. This ambitious work is a fictional accounting of the life of Mamah Cheney. After being hired by Cheney's husband to design a family home, Wright had a scandalous affair with Mrs. Cheney that wrecked both their marriages. This might seem like the plot of a romance novel, but believe me this book is not a romance novel! Cheney is portrayed as an educated woman struggling with her independence against the conventions of a time period when woman were for bearing children and keeping the home fires burning-to be seen but not heard!

Frank and Mamah both leave their respective families to live together and travel the world, then eventually settle in Wisconsin. Wright's bigger than life personality is adequately displayed by the author, but the real story here is Maham who lost much in her quest for self-realization and also in purusing her love for Wright. Her life is tragically cut short which makes for a difficult ending, still reading about this amazing woman, who was a head of her time makes for fascinating reading.