If there is a positive side to illness, it’s being able to catch up on reading. I’ve just finished Loving Frank, a novel about renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s love affair with a woman named Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

While I found the book intriguing on several levels, it was an odd read as well.

First, the intrigue. When the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit came to the Marin County Civic Center years ago, I served as a docent. I gave tours of the civic center, a Wright-designed building. I answered questions in a Usonion House erected on the grounds for visitors. Wright’s Usonian was made of inexpensive concrete blocks and was designed as a kind of “custom” home for everyman. In Loving Frank it was interesting to read about the person behind all the wonderful art and architecture.

Author Nancy Horan also managed to soften Wright’s edges. Anyone who has studied the architect comes away believing in his brilliance and finding him arrogant and egocentric. He was both, but Horan brought forth more of his many-faceted personality.

I appreciated every historical aspect of Loving Frank, which runs from 1907 to 1914. Horan researched and wrote her book over a seven year period. She captures all the nuances of the era in perfect detail.

During the five years I wrote my historical novel, The Still Voice, I took great pains to be faithful to the culture, customs, and language of the time. Set in Germany during World War II, my story spans the years 1939 to 1948. Everything about the era, from music, literature and dress to thought and politics, had to be just right.

What made Loving Frank a strange read for me was being at odds with the main character, Mamah, at times. I can understand her feeling stagnant in her life and constricted by the role women had in the early 1900s. But throughout the book, I couldn’t help but feel sorry for the husband and children she deserted to carry on her clandestine love affair with Wright.

It’s also odd to read a story when one knows the ending. The story of the madman who put an end to the lives of seven people (Mamah and her children included) at Wright’s Taliesin home, and burnt it to the ground, is well known. It’s to author Horan’s credit that she holds the reader’s interest to the end, even when the outcome of the story is well documented.