bookpagedev

History

Six who wore the crown

Review by bookpagedev

England has seen a good share of kings and queens; however, there have been only six queens regnant those who were ruling, or reigning queens, and not merely female consorts. In Sovereign Ladies, British historian Maureen Waller, who has written extensively about English history, focuses exclusively on the lives of these women who, with one exception, have been extremely competent, if not brilliant, sovereigns.

Waller has created an absorbing, thought-provoking historical narrative in vigorous prose that transports readers absolutely into the minds and times of these monarchs, while examining their lives, loves, travails and work from a female viewpoint. This perspective, however, is one that the author carefully keeps distinct from any pretensions to modern feminist ideas. She is intimate with, rationally sympathetic to and honest about her subject ladies and the limitations of both their sex and the parameters of queenly office, painting her royal portraits with insightful observation, obeisance where it is due and blunt opinions (among them, her assertion that Queen Elizabeth II was a less than stellar mother, and her children, according to those who know them, are arrogant, spoilt and selfish ) about the all-too-human frailties of these divinely anointed queens.

There has been much coverage of the lives of the faith-obsessed Mary I, the powerful Virgin Queen Elizabeth I, the long-reigning Empress Victoria and the present-day restrained English queen, and Sovereign Ladies gives them their due. Most interesting, however, are the sections on Queens Mary II and her sister, Anne, of the House of Stuart. These are lesser-known stories, of perhaps less gifted queens regnant who, when called to duty, took their own measure, and stepped forward to serve loyally, compassionately and competently.

Sovereign Ladies offers illuminating perspectives about the foundations of the English monarchy (and, indeed of English culture, past and present), its glorious ascent and its gradual decline into an office in which the queen does not rule, but offers more lukewarm support: She is there to be consulted, to encourage and to warn. Waller’s epilogue, while giving an apt historical summing up no mean feat given the time-span involved echoes this tepidity. Will there be another queen, or will the sun finally set on the monarchy? Who knows? says she.

Alison Hood is a writer in San Rafael, California.

England has seen a good share of kings and queens; however, there have been only six queens regnant those who were ruling, or reigning queens, and not merely female consorts. In Sovereign Ladies, British historian Maureen Waller, who has written extensively about English history,…
History

The last viceroy, his wife and Nehru

Review by bookpagedev

No one knows how many people died in the sectarian violence that accompanied the coming of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. Maybe 200,000, maybe 400,000, maybe 1 million. In a sense, the exact number scarcely matters. It was a horrific tragedy that defies any adequate emotional response. How could it have happened? The classic popular narrative was provided by Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre’s Freedom at Midnight (1975). First-time author Alex von Tunzelmann now gives us a fresh, perhaps more dispassionate, assessment in Indian Summer, timed to coincide with the 60th anniversary of Britain’s departure from the jewel of its imperial crown.

Von Tunzelmann tells the still-compelling story largely through the lives and interactions of the odd mŽnage ˆ trois at the center of the action: Louis, Earl Mountbatten, Britain’s last viceroy; his vivid wife Edwina; and Jawaharlal Nehru, the independence leader who became India’s first prime minister. Mohandas Gandhi, the Mahatma, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah of the Muslim League, the founder of Pakistan, play important supporting roles.

It has long been known that Edwina Mountbatten and Nehru had a passionate romantic relationship, almost certainly sexual, that started during her husband’s service as viceroy. Edwina devoted her previously frustrated talent to important relief work; Nehru did as much as humanly possible to mold a secular, democratic nation out of volatile contradictory elements. Louis, nicknamed Dickie, accepted his wife’s affairs as the price of keeping her, and he and Nehru formed a strong friendship, partly on the basis of their mutual love of Edwina. Von Tunzelmann argues convincingly that Mountbatten tilted his policy in Nehru’s favor in at least a couple of partition decisions. Jinnah saw what was going on, and reacted as one might expect.

But von Tunzelmann is not so simplistic as to blame Mountbatten for the subsequent disasters. Indeed, she concludes that Mountbatten carried out his primary mission of serving his country with as much success as possible. Britain retreated from India with dignity. What followed was beyond the control of any one person.

Anne Bartlett is a journalist in Washington, D.C.

No one knows how many people died in the sectarian violence that accompanied the coming of independence to India and Pakistan in 1947. Maybe 200,000, maybe 400,000, maybe 1 million. In a sense, the exact number scarcely matters. It was a horrific tragedy that…
NonfictionEducation

Restoring normalcy after the storm

Review by bookpagedev

Sugarcane Academy begins as the tale of a one-room schoolhouse created to educate children who were forced to flee as Hurricane Katrina approached. But it evolves into a broader account of how residents of New Orleans struggled to find safety and stability after the storm disrupted, and in some cases destroyed, their lives. A handful of parents, including author Michael Tisserand, provided some stability for their children by opening the schoolhouse near a sugarcane field, which the students named Sugarcane Academy. The school became the eye of the storm, a place where children could continue to learn how to read and write, and also reflect on their experiences related to the hurricane. Taught by an innovative teacher named Paul Reynaud, the children share their fears of the recent past and their optimism for the future through discussions, journals and art projects.

A journalist by trade, author Tisserand goes in search of the experiences of other hurricane evacuees. His quest takes him to a temporary shelter inside a domed sports stadium, where families sleep on cots and eat bag lunches while trying to figure out where they will live next. He returns to New Orleans to examine the death and destruction experienced by the victims, including neighbors and close friends. And he finds others who were inspired to create schools like Sugarcane Academy to educate their children until the troubled New Orleans school system could reopen.

Through his personal account, the experiences of his two children and the stories of people he encounters, Tisserand is able to accomplish what the extensive news coverage could not: He puts a human face on the tragedy, allowing readers to better understand the experiences of the victims of Katrina. John T. Slania is a journalism professor at Loyola University in Chicago.

Sugarcane Academy begins as the tale of a one-room schoolhouse created to educate children who were forced to flee as Hurricane Katrina approached. But it evolves into a broader account of how residents of New Orleans struggled to find safety and stability after the…
NonfictionPolitics

Billy Graham, pastor to presidents

Review by bookpagedev

Faith and politics have been inextricably linked since ancient kings first sought the wisdom of the priests. Though we tout the separation of church and state, religion and politics have always been dance partners, willing or not. The Preacher and the Presidents follows the modern incarnation of that dance in the relationships between world-renowned Christian evangelist Billy Graham and the men who have occupied the White House, one after the other, over the last 60 years. From Truman to George W. Bush, Graham met with them all, developing intimate friendships with men as diverse as Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan.

The Preacher and the Presidents, by Time magazine editor Michael Duffy and reporter Nancy Gibbs, tells how and why a self-proclaimed simple preacher from North Carolina achieved unparalleled access to the leaders of the world. Written with the full cooperation of Billy Graham, this book is no puff piece. From the beginning, Graham asked the authors to share the bad as well as the good. The result is an insightful and thorough account of Graham’s life among the presidents, both his blunders and blessings, from his na•vetŽ with the duplicitous Nixon to his support of the Clintons during impeachment and its aftermath.

As well written as it is researched, the book grants a fascinating look into the private faith, hopes and fears of the men and families who have lived in the White House. Indeed, there is as much to be learned about the presidents as about Graham, who became one of the few persons these men could count on to carry no agenda save their own well-being. The result was an outpouring of trust few others have known. Gibbs and Duffy also reveal how Graham’s presence contributed to the rise of faith-based political activism in both parties though he himself steadily grew in a conviction not to take sides. Whether your interest is politics, faith or simply the history of modern times, The Preacher and the Presidents offers a compelling read and a reminder that the secular and the sacred are never truly separate.

Howard Shirley is a writer from Franklin, Tennessee.

Faith and politics have been inextricably linked since ancient kings first sought the wisdom of the priests. Though we tout the separation of church and state, religion and politics have always been dance partners, willing or not. The Preacher and the Presidents follows the…
Fiction

A family’s life changed in an instant

Review by bookpagedev

<b>A family’s life changed in an instant</b> Like her 2005 debut novel, The Center of Everything, Laura Moriarty’s <b>The Rest of Her Life</b> is set in a small Kansas town, with a troubled mother-daughter relationship at its heart. This time around, rather than a wise-beyond-her-years girl as protagonist, we have middle-aged wife, mother and teacher Leigh, who has spent her life trying to counteract an unhappy childhood at the hands of a neglectful mother.

In doing so, she has developed an inability to communicate with her own daughter, Kara (a pretty, popular high school senior), without worrying how she will be perceived or received. For Leigh, whose mother dragged her and her sister from town to town before abandoning Leigh when she was 16, every encounter is a minefield of potential rejection. She has an easier time with her preteen son who, like Leigh, is smart but unpopular. Leigh does succeed in creating a stable home: She becomes a well-liked English teacher, marries college-professor Gary and keeps in contact with her sister, Pam. The family lives in a nice house, and her gossipy friend Eva keeps Leigh up to date on local current events. Then a horrific accident puts the family in the spotlight: Kara is driving the family SUV while talking on her cell phone, and she hits and kills a classmate. It’s at once a message for our modern age and the catalyst for a sudden, painful re-examination of the family’s relationships and their place in a small, tight-knit town. The Rest of Her Life bears blurbs from Jacquelyn Mitchard and Jodi Picoult, and readers who enjoy those authors will find this book appealing. Like them, Moriarty has taken a close look at a family in a way that is sympathetic, yet unflinching. As in her earlier work, Moriarty doesn’t take the easy way out: Although the characters do find a semblance of peace, their definition of a happy ending has been forever altered. Linda M. Castellitto writes from North Carolina.

<b>A family's life changed in an instant</b> Like her 2005 debut novel, The Center of Everything, Laura Moriarty's <b>The Rest of Her Life</b> is set in a small Kansas town, with a troubled mother-daughter relationship at its heart. This time around, rather than a wise-beyond-her-years…

FictionHistorical Fiction

Hard times on the tundra

Review by bookpagedev

The Inuit of Canada’s sub-Artic Hudson Bay are tough people. Throw tragedy after tragedy at them and they endure, if not with a sunny disposition, at least with the feeling that life is a thing to be survived, a constant battle with nature for your very existence. At least that’s the way it seems to be for Victoria, the protagonist of Kevin Patterson’s poignant debut novel (after a memoir and a short story collection), Consumption. After suffering a bout of tuberculosis that takes her away from her family for six years while she recuperates in a sanatorium, she returns to her home of Rankin Inlet, a place she no longer understands. Though the old hunters, including her father, have all come off the land and live in homes now, Victoria still hungers for more knowledge of and connection to the outside world as she knew it when she lived in the south. She marries a Kablunauk (white person) and settles down to raise her family as best she can in a tiny, once-isolated community that is becoming a place where cultures clash. Her son longs to live off the land and hunt with his dogs, while one daughter falls in love with Axl Rose on satellite television and the other folds into herself in ways that are hauntingly familiar to Victoria. A diamond mine mars the tundra and Victoria’s family is beset by hardships that tear it apart. All the while there is no one for Victoria to turn to whether her own people or the whites who have come to the village, including the doctor from New York who delivered all her children for comfort. This is a heart-rending tale of the ways things change from generation to generation in a family and a society. While change sometimes comes at a dizzying pace, there are some things that stay the same, like the enduring strength of people whose ancestors lived on the land and survived unfathomable hardships. Sometimes it seems there is not much difference at all between tough-as-a-glacier Victoria and her ancestors.

Sarah E. White writes from Arkansas.

The Inuit of Canada's sub-Artic Hudson Bay are tough people. Throw tragedy after tragedy at them and they endure, if not with a sunny disposition, at least with the feeling that life is a thing to be survived, a constant battle with nature for…
Fiction

Putting a face on immigration

Review by bookpagedev

Marina Lewycka’s second novel Strawberry Fields is a darkly comic trip through rural England told by migrant workers on a strawberry farm. Lewycka, who immigrated to England as a child, has previously written about immigrants in Britain in her Booker-nominated A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (2005), which told the story of two quarreling sisters who interfere in their father’s budding romance with a vivacious, money-hungry Ukrainian ŽmigrŽ. In Strawberry Fields, the author broadens both the range and technique of her storytelling gifts.

Strawberry Fields opens on a farm whose migrant crew bridges three continents and two species. The novel continuously changes perspectives, giving each character including the farm dog an opportunity to tell their part of the story. The focus of the novel gradually shifts to two young Ukrainians: Andriy, from a rural mining family and Irina, fresh off the Dover boat. Despite their opposing politics and their initially petty quarrels, the two share the bittersweet dream that England will provide better opportunities than their homeland. As their romantic notions of the West drop away, their relationship blossoms into love.

Strawberry Fields deftly portrays both the kindnesses of the workers to one another and the harsh realities of migrant life, including the almost childlike dependency of the workers on the middlemen who exploit them. These self-made entrepreneurs with their Rolexes and mobilfons make their living by trafficking in human lives and preying on the youth, illegality and innocence of their na•ve employees.

As the band of workers breaks up, Irina and Andriy stay on the move, from strawberry fields to chicken processing plant, nursing home to restaurant kitchen. Still, the couple never loses their humor or grace. With immigration taking a primary place in the daily news, it’s important to have a novel like this, putting a face on the faceless with heart and humor.

Lauren Bufferd writes from Nashville.

Marina Lewycka's second novel Strawberry Fields is a darkly comic trip through rural England told by migrant workers on a strawberry farm. Lewycka, who immigrated to England as a child, has previously written about immigrants in Britain in her Booker-nominated A Short History of…
Fiction

Testing family ties

Review by bookpagedev

In Dennis McFarland’s earlier novels, including his well-received debut, The Music Room (1990), and the acclaimed Prince Edward (2004), he displayed a remarkable finesse for creating scenes of family dynamics that ring uncannily true. His latest novel, Letter from Point Clear, continues in that vein a tale of three children from a wealthy family in Point Clear, Alabama, McFarland’s native state. As soon as they were of age, siblings Ellen, Morris and Bonnie left Point Clear and headed north, away from life with their alcoholic father. Ellen, the oldest, is a poet, and she and her husband and son live near Boston. They have a summer house on the Cape, and joining them there for a weekend are Morris and Richard, his partner of many years. Baby sister Bonnie, who had a minor acting career in New York, remained in Point Clear for several months following their father’s funeral, ostensibly tying up loose ends.

But then an unexpected letter from Bonnie arrives. She has married an evangelical preacher 10 years her junior, and they are living in the family mansion, their gardens tended by the family gardeners, their meals prepared by the family maid who has lived behind the house for decades.

Morris and Ellen are miffed at not being invited to Bonnie’s wedding, and they are more than slightly curious about her new husband, Pastor Vandorpe. Fearing he’s a fortune hunter, they set off to investigate. When they arrive, McFarland’s saga takes off, as old and new family members, including Pastor’s parents, struggle with issues of guilt, the equitable division of family property and Pastor’s negative feelings about Morris’ sexual orientation, which cast a pall over everything and are brought to a head during a disastrous dinner where one of the invitees is a former homosexual saved by Pastor.

McFarland perceptively delves into familial and marital relationships with rare empathy, and injects humor into even the most awkward situations. This is a splendid read for a family vacation, especially one peopled by a few quirky characters.

Deborah Donovan writes from Cincinnati and La Veta, Colorado.

In Dennis McFarland's earlier novels, including his well-received debut, The Music Room (1990), and the acclaimed Prince Edward (2004), he displayed a remarkable finesse for creating scenes of family dynamics that ring uncannily true. His latest novel, Letter from Point Clear, continues in that…
Children's & YA

Resurrecting a bedtime book from a bygone era

Review by bookpagedev

Readers of a certain age (and I’ll admit that I’m one of them) will feel waves of nostalgia when they turn the pages of My Go to Bed Book. The familiar Dick-and-Jane style drawings, the slightly antiquated typesetting, the quaint messages in rhyming text, all take us back to the days when Baby Boomers were toddlers, and good little children knew when and how to march off to bed and allow their parents to enjoy the cocktail hour in peace. This trip-back-in-time comes courtesy of B &andamp; H Publishing Group, which discovered a copy of this 1950s treasure in its archives and is reprinting it in a board book version which will be available next month.

The title page announces that this is a book that mothers will appreciate because of its appeal in making bed-time a pleasant, happy experience for the child. And also for the parents, we would add. The charming tow-headed youngster pictured in My Go to Bed Book dutifully observes the 7:00 time on a wall clock and begins his bedtime routine taking off his britches, bathing, brushing his teeth, hearing a bedtime story from his mother and saying his prayers before quietly slippping into bed. Parents everywhere will sigh and wonder, why isn’t bedtime like this at our house? The author of this comforting little tale was Hildegarde Ford, an Illinois woman who couldn’t find the kind of books she wanted to read to her children and decided to write her own. Ford (who used her maiden name when writing and was actually known as Velma Morrison) joined with illustrator Mary Win to create My Go to Bed Book, which was first published by Broadman Press in 1956 and has been out of print for more than 20 years. Described as a Renaissance woman, Ford taught school, ran a dairy farm with her husband, raised four children, studied genetics and archaeology in her spare time (she was one of the first to raise and sell hybrid chickens) and traveled the world with her husband after retirement. She was excited by the publisher’s plan to re-release her book, although she did not live to see it happen. Ford died in April in Princeton, Illinois, at the age of 97. Her illustrator, Mary Win Walter Norris, now 93, still lives in Princeton and paints occasionally in her studio.

B&andamp;H Executive Editor Paul Mikos, who stumbled across an original copy of My Go to Bed Book in the company’s archives, recalls, The art captured my attention immediately, striking me as both nostalgic and timeless. His curiosity piqued, Mikos began researching the book’s history. It sat on my desk for several weeks while I Googled and sleuthed, trying to find more information on the author and illustrator. Nearly everyone who visited my office during that time had to pick up the book or comment that the style and colors reminded them of Goodnight Moon or Curious George. Now, Mikos says, his own daughter is enjoying the book. My two-year-old has worked it into her bedtime ritual, insisting on reading it four or five times each sitting, he says.

Mikos credits Carol Bird, director of the Matson Public Library in Princeton, as being instrumental in tracking down Ford and Win and connecting them with their former publisher. The library will celebrate the grand opening of a new facility in September, and B&andamp;H has donated a complete collection of its children’s books in honor of Velma Hildegarde Ford Morrison.

Readers of a certain age (and I'll admit that I'm one of them) will feel waves of nostalgia when they turn the pages of My Go to Bed Book. The familiar Dick-and-Jane style drawings, the slightly antiquated typesetting, the quaint messages in rhyming text,…
Children's & YA

Tall tails

Review by bookpagedev

The best thing about Emmy is not that she’s a good girl. It isn’t that she obeys her nanny or gets good grades. And it certainly isn’t that she eats her vegetables. No, the best thing about the heroine of Lynne Jonell’s Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat is that Emmy develops the courage to believe in herself.

Emmy has lived a curious life ever since her parents inherited Great-Great-Uncle William’s mansion and fortune. The kids at school look right through her and her teacher forgets her name. Miss Barmy, her new nanny, insists that Emmy eat tofu and visit the school psychologist. But Emmy’s life is never the same after the day the class’ pet rat begins talking to her.

The strange events of Emmy’s life suddenly seem connected, and they all appear to lead right back to Miss Barmy: Emmy’s parents forget about their daughter after they eat Miss Barmy’s potato rolls, Miss Barmy berates Emmy for her supposed behavioral problems and makes her drink an unidentifiable violet tonic and then, of course, there’s the talking rat. When classmate Joe Benson can suddenly see her and the Rat follows her home, Emmy decides to investigate these intriguing instances in a quest for self-confidence and her parents’ love. But can she uncover the peculiar mystery while the ever-present Miss Barmy lurks in every corner? And can Miss Barmy’s true nature be revealed before it’s too late for Emmy and her parents? Jonell has invented a fantastic tale of magic, bravery and love, and Jonathan Bean’s flip book illustrations of the Rat crawling across a branch and tumbling into Emmy’s hands add to the charm. Friends are found in the unlikeliest of places and Emmy discovers that it is OK to sometimes venture outside of the good-girl role. With friends like Joe, the Rat, Brian and Professor Capybara by her side, the newly confident Emmy can move mountains.

Jonell has published seven picture books, but this is her first fiction for middle-grade readers. She is currently working on a sequel to Emmy’s adventures, which we hope will be just as rousing as her first.

Katie Lewis investigates her own mysteries sans rodents in Nashville.

The best thing about Emmy is not that she's a good girl. It isn't that she obeys her nanny or gets good grades. And it certainly isn't that she eats her vegetables. No, the best thing about the heroine of Lynne Jonell's Emmy and…
Fiction

Keeping the House

Review by bookpagedev

Midwestern author Ellen Baker’s debut novel spans three generations of the Mickelson family, who live in an imposing house on a hill in bucolic Park Rapids, Wisconsin. The legend is that an Indian chief placed a curse on that hill, the final resting place of his young daughter. Anyone who disturbed it would be unlucky in love.

Dolly Magnuson, a newlywed just moved to town in 1950, learns of the Mickelsons during gossipy quilting sessions with the church ladies. Somewhat disenchanted with married life, she falls in love with the neglected house, and wants to find out what happened to make the family leave town. She sneaks into the house and tries to clean it up, but her plan goes awry when the last Mickelson son, World War II veteran JJ, arrives home unexpectedly. As she works around him, he opens up to her and gradually provides the missing pieces of the puzzle.

This story does what all good stories should do: It takes you places some homey and warm, and others where you’d rather not go. The central characters are the Mickelson women, sympathetic, troubled and beautiful. The men are aloof, roiling with unclaimed emotion and needs. The plot shifts between Dolly’s own troubled marriage and her housekeeping efforts, and the sad tale of the Mickelson family, spanning two world wars. Baker has a degree in American Studies, and her debut is as much a look at wifery and creating a home life as it is a family saga. Using chapter headings from ladies’ journals of the period to help set the mood, Baker does a skillful job of painting a picture of early 20th-century society, blending it with an intricate look at a single family’s experience to create a compelling drama that is full of love, conflict, loss and life.

Midwestern author Ellen Baker's debut novel spans three generations of the Mickelson family, who live in an imposing house on a hill in bucolic Park Rapids, Wisconsin. The legend is that an Indian chief placed a curse on that hill, the final resting place…
Fiction

What You Have Left

Review by bookpagedev

Will Allison, who has worked as executive editor at Story magazine and editor-at-large for Zoetrope: All-Story, knows his way around a good tale. With his debut novel, What You Have Left, Allison has written a very good story indeed.

It centers on Holly, a girl left to live with her grandfather in 1976 at age five after her mother, a former aspiring NASCAR driver, dies following a waterskiing accident and her father runs off. Said grandfather is last in a long line of men who have all succumbed to Alzheimer’s, and he’s determined not to meet the same fate.

Eventually Holly decides she must track down her father, and their eventual reunion is strange but satisfying. The members of this family all seem to share the same kind of crazy, and they’re all hilarious, tragic, deeply human characters you’d love to sit and have a beer (or a pitcher of Bloody Marys) with.

Their stories are filled with human failings, as well as the anguish of loss and the hope for forgiveness from those most important to them. They’re also filled with situations most readers can’t relate to like dirt track racing and some that everyone can relate to like trying to mourn a loved one, heal a wound, start a new life. The book skips through the decades and follows different characters’ points of view, which is sometimes a little jarring but ultimately gives readers a broader and better view of the story. Born and raised in South Carolina, Allison knows Southern characters and paints them with a sympathetic brush, even when they’re addicted to video poker, sneaking cigarettes or defending their state’s right to fly the Confederate flag. What You Have Left is a book readers will want to rush through and savor at the same time.

Will Allison, who has worked as executive editor at Story magazine and editor-at-large for Zoetrope: All-Story, knows his way around a good tale. With his debut novel, What You Have Left, Allison has written a very good story indeed.

It centers on…
FictionHistorical Fiction

Loving Frank

Review by bookpagedev

The story told in Nancy Horan’s anticipated debut, Loving Frank, is familiar to many who have heard of Frank Lloyd Wright: He left his wife, who would not grant him a divorce, for another married woman. After running away together to Europe in 1909, they returned to live in Wisconsin at Taliesin, the house that Frank built for her. Now, after all these years, we have the story from the perspective of that married woman, Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

As with any well-done account of a well-known story, it is hard to tell where the facts leave off and fiction begins. Loving Frank presents a fine picture of the woman who loved Wright the thoughts that Horan puts into Mamah’s head ring true, especially those regarding Frank’s wife. Mamah had no illusions anymore that they could one day sit down and talk. Catherine would go on withholding herself, refusing to compromise, keeping Mamah an illicit’ woman until they were all dust. The price both of them had paid for loving Frank was dear indeed. For readers who don’t have more than a passing interest in subjects such as feminism, Italy or Frank’s architectural philosophies, there may be times when the narrative slows. But Horan, a former journalist who lived for 24 years in Oak Park, Illinois, near many of the architect’s most famous buildings, has a fluid writing style that is likely to carry even the most reluctant reader through her story. She gives us Frank’s ideals of truth and honesty in living, and imagines how they might have been shared by Mamah. Considering the era, it was an immense sacrifice for her to follow the man she loved, especially when his wife would not grant him a divorce.

It is one thing to read of Mamah’s tragic end in a paragraph or two embedded in the many accomplishments of Frank Lloyd Wright. But it is quite another to read about it after feeling you’ve come to know her, and that is the power of this beautiful love story.

The story told in Nancy Horan's anticipated debut, Loving Frank, is familiar to many who have heard of Frank Lloyd Wright: He left his wife, who would not grant him a divorce, for another married woman. After running away together to Europe in 1909,…

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