"One Lives But Once in the World" -Goethe

About a month ago, I found myself immersed in Nancy Horan’s captivating work of historical fiction, Loving Frank. Loving Frank chronicles the scandalous affair between famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney, a highly educated wife and mother who was among his clientele. The home Wright built for the Cheney family in 1903 remains a well-maintained structure amongst the many architectural gems that dot the neighborhoods of Oak Park. While I was reading the book, and even now, I like to imagine what Oak Park was like a century ago, and that Mamah and Frank walked along the same streets I frequent on my morning runs through the architectural district.

The story is told through the eyes of Mamah Borthwick Cheney (pronounced May-muh), a beautiful, erudite woman who falls in love with Frank while he commissions a new home for her and her husband Edward Cheney, an established electrical engineer. It is quite clear that Mamah and Edwin’s marriage is a pragmatic rather than a romantic pairing—at least for Mamah. She'd had many suitors, but Mamah finally agreed to marry Edwin after his persistent courting, and in doing so she left behind unfulfilled dreams:

For as long as Mamah could remember, she had felt a longing inside for something she could not name. . . . She had wanted to be a writer of substance, or maybe a translator of great works. But the years passed. She was nearing thirty when Edwin finally won her over. By the time she married him, she’d put those dreams to rest. (Horan 33)

As her relationship with Frank develops, Mamah discovers that it is in conversation with him that her dreams are slowly brought back to life. In Frank, Mamah finds someone she truly connects with, someone with whom she can debate and laugh and speak freely—her soul mate. Mamah and Frank’s forbidden blossoming love leaves them in a quandary—to indulge in it, no matter how free and easy and addictive it may be, defies societal morals—both parties have family and children and responsibilities and reputations to uphold. The weight of the affair especially affects Mamah, and she is often plagued by pangs of guilt, which continue to resurface throughout her life. As a result, in its earliest stages, Mamah and Frank's intimacy with one another ebbs and flows, Mamah cutting off the affair to refocus on her family, Frank his work . . . but each continues to pine after the other.

When Frank invites Mamah to travel to Europe with him, after much deliberation, she accepts, leaving behind her loved ones and privileged life. This is where the story, and Mamah's personality, begins to take flight. Despite my ethical objections to Mamah’s decision to leave her family, especially her children, I was drawn to (and consequently sympathetic towards) her strong conviction to follow her heart and seek out a more authentic, fulfilling life.

On one of her first nights abroad with Frank, Mamah “dreamed she was flying. She saw herself moving like a bird, arms outstretched, across the sky. A small hinged door in her chest opened up, and dark colored shapes fell through the opening to the snow-covered fields below” (Horan 90). I see these dark shapes as representative of Mamah’s past life: her husband, those who would chide her actions, her role as a wife and mother. It is important to note that Horan’s plot closely parallels the past; the historical Mamah Borthwick did in fact make the audacious choice to leave her family during a time when divorce was mostly unheard of and certainly not supported. She suffered harsh criticism from the yellow journalists of the time, in melodramatic stories that often portrayed her as a villainous temptress.

Despite the troubles at home, Mamah perseveres. While abroad she meets Ellen Key, a feminist philosopher whose theories give Mamah direction and strength. Serendipitously, Mamah lands a job as Key’s American translator, and she finds pleasure and a sense of identity “sitting in the hotel room translating Ellen’s essays. . . . She had discovered the state of her soul set down in ink” (137). One cannot help but be drawn to the excitement in Mamah’s voice as she begins to discover her vocation and reinvent herself. In an interview with the Random House Reading Circle, Horan says of the novel’s leading lady, “It was the condition of loving Frank that launched (Mamah) into a path that she could never have foreseen” (369). Loving Frank certainly engenders Mamah’s transformation, but in cultivating her personality, Mamah loses valuable time nurturing her children as they grow up, and their relationships do suffer as a result.

Loving Frank is a beautiful, heart-breaking novel with an engaging storyline and smooth, well-crafted prose. The truth Horan communicates via her work of historical fiction continues to stay with me: love for the person who ignites your soul’s great passions, seeking out vocation, and keeping connected with one’s family is worth fighting for, no matter what the cost.