For seven years, Nancy Horan was on fire for an architect.
The author would wake up in the middle of the night and have to write. She always kept a pad of paper by her bed.
While living in Oak Park, Ill., she had become fascinated by Frank Lloyd Wright, whose early work spots the town. She began writing a book that detailed an affair between Wright and one of his clients, Mamah Cheney, an early feminist.
“I was obsessed with it,” Horan said.
Horan has since relocated to Whidbey Island and intends to give a reading from “Loving Frank” in Seattle tonight. Her debut novel, a best-seller, was released in paperback earlier this month.
She began writing the book in 1999 while living six blocks from the Cheney home, one of many designed by Wright. While the architect intrigued Horan, his relationship with Cheney was even more interesting. Both Wright and Cheney left their spouses and children to be together.
The relationship became a scandal at the time. Cheney was a target in the press.
“On one hand she was described in the headlines as a vampire,” Horan said. “On the other hand, she was described by people who knew her as a noble woman, a lovely woman, highly cultivated, a delight.”
Curious about the contradiction, Horan worked on the book in isolation for four years, trying to show how the social tenors of the early 1900s complicated the affair. But something wasn’t clicking.
She scrapped the draft, which used multiple points of view and included another famous Oak Park resident, a young Ernest Hemingway.
“He was the paperboy in my first version,” she said with a laugh. “Awkward as heck.”
Horan joined a writers group that included luminaries such as Elizabeth Berg, another best-selling author. The group gave her focus. She made changes. The perspective moved almost solely to Cheney, who she portrayed as a woman torn between blinding love for Wright and dedication to her children.
“Usually,” Horan wrote, “the guilt centered on the same frozen image — the moment she had walked out of the bedroom in Boulder (Colo.) while (her children) John and Martha slept. Always, whenever she thought of it, she asked herself the same horrified question: Did I even look back at them?”
Finally, Horan felt she had something.
Divulging too much of the story’s historical roots could spoil the book for readers unaware of the events. However, for Horan, the history — including letters written by Cheney and numerous newspaper articles — helped her trace the couple’s relationship. After all, reporters hounded the pair from Berlin, Germany, to Wisconsin.
“The story struck me as having the structure of a Greek tragedy,” Horan said. “To me the press was the big chorus in the background, commenting on the action.”
First published in 2007, “Loving Frank” was embraced by critics and fans of Wright. The Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trust, based in Oak Park, carries the novel in its gift shop.
“There’s actually not a lot known about Mamah Cheney,” said Lauren Finch, a spokeswoman for the trust. “Nancy was able to find these letters and piece together what may have happened. It’s given another glimpse into these fascinating lives.”
Horan has enjoyed the response to “Loving Frank.” Before it, she had never published a short story — her writing had been mostly relegated to home and garden pieces for the Chicago Tribune. Now, her novel is being translated into Swedish.
Fanning the interest, reviews have been positive across the board, with the New York Times Book Review calling it enthralling.
“I’m really grateful for that, because it’s kind of scary, sure it is,” Horan said, eating a piece of toast in a Whidbey Island restaurant. “You don’t know if what you’ve written is even going to get published.”
The book and its success came at an interesting time for Horan. Like Cheney, she too was in transition between different worlds.
A former schoolteacher and freelance journalist, she moved to Whidbey Island with her photojournalist husband in September 2006, shortly before her career as a novelist took off.
The move was difficult for Horan, the mother of two college-age boys. Not only was she leaving friends in Oak Park, but she arrived in Washington at the summer’s end, when the weather starts to turn.
“But Chicago’s pretty darn gray all winter — really gray,” she said with a smile. “I don’t know if people realize that or not. And cold as can be. This is a different kind of cold, but the people are very warm.”
While she intends to tour behind “Loving Frank” throughout the summer, she has begun work on a new novel. She doesn’t offer many details about the work in progress, which again will be historical fiction.
Unlike her first novel, however, it won’t star Frank Lloyd Wright.
“I’m pretty excited about it,” she said. “I hope it all works out.”
Reporter Andy Rathbun: 425-339-3455 or e-mail arathbun@heraldnet.com
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