A sizzling love affair with Frank Lloyd Wright

Last year when I saw several of the girls in my group of friends reading Loving Frank by Nancy Horan, I didn't understand the appeal. It's a stuffy old architect from over 100 years ago, right?

Wrong.

In Loving Frank, Nancy Horan creates a historical fiction story about one of Frank Lloyd Wright's long term mistresses, Mamah Cheney. Although the details in the book are made up, the bigger picture is all factual and everything that happened in the book, really happened between 1903 and 1914.

I thought, ok. This sounds good. Maybe someday I will read it, and then I promptly forgot about it.

Then when Lisa suggested touring the Frank Lloyd Wright home in Oak Park, IL while we were all Chicago, she urged me to read Loving Frank. I didn't want to tour his home cold, and know very little about his life, so I checked out the book and planned to begin reading it on the bus to Chicago.

Oh my, am I glad that I did. Not just because I gained some knowledge about Frank Lloyd Wright's family before touring his home, but because it was so interesting and the story was so enthralling. FLW is a very charismatic man that is easy to love and hate at the same time. I commented to the girls once we got to Chicago that I wasn't sure if I liked Frank. Obviously, he's unfaithful to his wife and he's famously carrying on an affair with another married woman, but there are moments in the book where I was literally cheering for Frank and Mamah, wanting them to be together.

Here is the synopsis from Goodreads:

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.

The end of this book had a twist so shocking and out of nowhere that it left me stunned and heartbroken. Since finishing this book, I have not been able to stop thinking about it and have already recommended it to several people.

You want to know the twist right? I'm telling you, you will fly through this book just to get to this twist!


While in Chicago I was really looking forward to touring FLW's home. His home, which he built for his wife and children to live in is nestled in an Oak Park neighborhood, surrounded by old Victorian homes. It's kind of funny to see, because there are all these homes that look very similar and then sitting on the corner is a FLW home, that is so clearly not like the others.

The tour took about an hour and we toured his family room, dining room, children's bedrooms and playrooms, FLW and his wife's bedroom and his studio. The guide was fantastic and she was so clearly well-educated on his life and career. She had many anecdotal stories and comments about each room. It made the tour so much fun!



Today I am linking up with Blonde Undercover Blonde for her Friday Book Club - stop by and check it out! I'm always interested in seeing what everybody else is reading.

Tales from The Windy City

Tomorrow I am off to Chicago, and I couldn't be more excited!

Living in Des Moines, we are very spoiled. We're perfectly centered around four major cities, one of them being one of the biggest cities in the world! DSM is about five hours west of Chicago, three hours north of Kansas City, two hours east of Omaha and four hours south of Minneapolis. This makes it so easy to get to things that we couldn't normally get to at home. I love it!

Growing up my family was not a "let's go the big city for vacation!" type people, we were more of the "let's go to the mountains and camp!" type of people. Both of my parents were raised in the midwest and almost as soon as they possibly could, they skipped town and headed west. Both ended up in Spokane, WA (heeelllo, mountains!) and then I magically appeared. Yes, magically. (ew, guys!)

So, that is the long winded way to say that growing up I did not visit Chicago once, even though we were SO CLOSE. Not once. The first time I visited Chicago was when I was 19 and freshly finished with my freshman year of college. That was when I met all of my best girlfriends that are still my girlfriends today. We were bored one summer, so, we decided to take a road trip to The Windy City!

{Us taking a break from shopping on Michigan for a quick photo opp with Abe.}

None of us were 21 and we hit some speed bumps upon arriving to Chicago and our pre-booked hotel. The very stoic hotel hostess (is that what they're called?) refused, absolutely REFUSED, to let us stay there because we were too young.

What?

We looked at each other and didn't really know what to do. Chicago, you weren't impressing me.

Luckily, we found another hotel that gladly accepted the four of us (and our money) and we were no longer homeless in the big city. After that, we shopped. And ate. Then shopped some more. And I bought fake hair. Remember the fake hair craze? No, not extensions. The clip in kind. I kind of went gaga over that.

See?

{This is a picture of a picture - excuse the flash! ;)}

I loved that thing. I wore it till it was too frizzy to wear anymore. One guy I was dating even thought it was real. (seriously?)

I did not correct him. (teehee)

Fast forward about three years later and I am graduating college and I've accepted a job with a company that had headquarters in Chicago. Each year we would have annual meetings there called The Princess Ball. Yep, you read right. An annual meeting with the entire company (probably about 150 people) called The Princess Ball. You know I was all over that.

The Princess Ball, was basically a week's worth of meetings, but one night we had dinner and an actual BALL. Yes, a ball. We dressed up and watched our colleagues get drunk. It was greeaaaat! I can safely say that I was NOT one of those colleagues. I enjoyed watching them!


In all fun, we were a great group and I miss them all very much!

{We always had the event at the same hotel, the Knickerbocker, and that light up dancefloor was enough to get everyone dancing - even me! }

Since that company closed, I have not been to Chicago. In fact, I was trying to remember the last time I was there and it was over five years ago!

Unacceptable!

Here's the last time I was there... five years ago and many different shades of hair color ago...

{That's me in the middle with the brown hair and being very theatrical... I cant tell I was about to laugh, if the picture would have clicked half a second later, I'm positive I would have been laughing. ;)}

So, on top of being excited to see some of best bloggers-turned-girlfriends, I get to visit a city that I really enjoy and has sentimental meaning to me!

Tomorrow, I will have a guest post from one of my very best friends, Miss Oakley! She's an IRL friend turned blogger and she couldn't be funnier! You all are really in for a treat, so make sure not to miss it. She is HILARIOUS! If you'd like to check out her blog, visit her at Observations of Miss Oakley!

What's your favorite city to visit? Have you ever been to Chicago?