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Summaries and Customer Reviews are supplied by Amazon.com
The most pivotal and yet least understood event of Frank Lloyd Wright’s celebrated life involves the brutal murders in 1914 of seven adults and children dear to the architect and the destruction by fire of Taliesin, his landmark residence, near Spring Green, Wisconsin. Unaccountably, the details of that shocking crime have been largely ignored by Wright’s legion of biographers—a historical and cultural gap that is finally addressed in William Drennan’s exhaustively researched Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders.
In response to the scandal generated by his open affair with the proto-feminist and free love advocate Mamah Borthwick Cheney, Wright had begun to build Taliesin as a refuge and "love cottage" for himself and his mistress (both married at the time to others).
Conceived as the apotheosis of Wright’s prairie house style, the original Taliesin would stand in all its isolated glory for only a few months before the bloody slayings that rocked the nation and reduced the structure itself to a smoking hull.
Supplying both a gripping mystery story and an authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, Drennan wades through the myths surrounding Wright and the massacre, casting fresh light on the formulation of Wright’s architectural ideology and the cataclysmic effects that the Taliesin murders exerted on the fabled architect and on his subsequent designs.
Boring and too little about the murders
| Customer Rating:   | | I read "Loving Frank" by Nancy Horan, a very good book by the way, and enjoyed it so much that I wanted more. I wanted more information on Mamah Cheney and the murders that took place at Taliesin but was disappointed to realize that this isn't the book for that. Sure, the last half of the book talks about the murders but you have to endure the first half just to get to it. As another reviewer pointed out, there are no diagrams or layouts to help you visualize where everything took place in the home and the information about Mamah and the murders is just too brief to title the book "Death in a Prairie House". Even the biographical information about Frank would be better retrieved in the biography by Meryle Secrest. I suggest you save your money when it comes to this book. |
FLW beat to a different drum...
| Customer Rating: | | If ever there was a paradoxial person in this world it would be Mr. Wright. He was a genius and an eccentric man at the same time. He loved what he did and he it well but at the expense of others. This book delves into the his life style and his love of Mamah but focuses mostly on his work and his mind. I am only halfway thru the book and still have not been 'introduced' to the madman who ended the spirit of FLW. But so far...this is a must-read for FLW fans and just for those who want a good-read. |
The Best Account of the Tragedy
| Customer Rating: | This books gives an account of the tragic event and the circumstances surrounding it -- the murder of Mamah Borthwick Cheney, her two children and other members of celebrated architect Frank Lloyd Wright's household at Taliesin, his sprawling hillside home near Spring Green, Wisconsin.
The book is a work of non-fiction; it gives the reader as detailed a portrait of the tragedy as possible, now, nearly a century later.
William Drennan's account of the events takes a closer and more scientific approach to the fire and murders than heretofore. Mrs. Cheney and her son and daughter, along with members of the Taliesin household, were having lunch when the disaster occurred. A servant set fire to the house, and as the frightened residents attempted to flee, he killed many and wounded others using an axe. Word reached both Mr. Wright and Mr. Cheney in Chicago, at about the same time; they took the same train up to Wisconsin, still unsure of who had lived, who had died, and what might have precipitated the disaster.
In earlier biographies of Wright, none of the authors analyzed Taliesin's features--floor plans, doors, windows and courtyards--with an eye toward reconciling the sequence of events as witnessed by the survivors. Drennan remedies their oversight and in so doing, shows Wright scholars and aficionados, as well as the general reader, what probably occurred on that sad day. If you enjoy history, true-crime, or are simply a fan of Wright, you will not want to miss reading this book.
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Review for Death n a Prairie House
| Customer Rating: | | The book was in excellent condition and shipped in good time. I believe it arrived even before the forecasted delivery date. |
Completely inexcusable mistakes & shoddy research
| Customer Rating: | While Drennan wrote about his amount of research done for this book, he came to incomplete conclusions; completely misinterpreted his research; or lost his references in (I am sure) his piles of notes. It's apparent to those who have studied Wright, or have an interest in him, that, while Drennan refers to books in the bibliography, he didn't study them, particularly in his misunderstanding of a proper floor plan for Taliesin I.
There are things that he just gets plain wrong (page numbers refer to the hardcover version of the book).
Page 6, he writes that Taliesin is on the "banks of the Wisconsin River." It's not. It's just down from the top of a hill (on the brow of the hill, leading to the name "Taliesin", "shining brow" in Welsh) and also separated from the river by a road.
Page 16, he states that Wright spend "five summers" working on his family's farm. Wright spent summers there from the ages of 11-18.
Page 19, He writes that Wright went to Chicago and spent 2 dollars on a concert. Wright wrote in his autobiography that he spent $1.
Page 31, he states that Wright met CR Ashbee in 1896. They met in 1900, which Drennan would have known if he had read one of the books he cites in his bibliography, _Frank Lloyd Wright: The Lost Years, 1910-1922: A Study of Influence_, by Anthony Alofsin.
Page 67, A statue shown in a photograph on this page is referred to as "an [Alfonso] Ianelli sprite" (from Wright's Midway Gardens project in Chicago, IL) when it's actually _Flower in the Crannied Wall_, designed by Richard Bock for Wright's Susan Lawrence Dana House in Springfield, IL (which he would have known had he read Narciso Menocal's article about the statue in _Taliesin 1911-1914: Wright Studies, v. 1_, which Drennan cited in his bibliography).
Page 161 he writes that, "When Miriam Noel learned of Olgivanna, she lay siege to the place and dragged out divorce proceedings for five turbulent years." Wright and Noel were married in 1923, and divorced in 1927.
Page 168, he states that Wright had been buried "next to" Mamah. Their graves are about 20 feet apart. Drennan refers several times to the valley that the Lloyd Joneses lived in as "Bear Creek," but it's never been called that (Helena Valley is acceptable).
He also writes that Wright's family had come across the United States directly to Spring Green, Wisconsin, when in truth they'd actually settled in Ixonia, Wisconsin (on the eastern side of the state) for about a decade before coming to Spring Green.
There are various statements he made that have no citation in the endnotes:
Page 14, Wright's father's turn as a Unitarian minister is described on page 14 as "a 'sop,' it has been called" - no citation
Page 15, he states that Wright's half-sister Lizzie charged that his mother was "spoiling Frank rotten..." - no citation
Page 15, he states that Wright's father "pointedly" called Wright and his two sisters, "Anna's children" - no citation
Page 137, he refers to "One online source" with no citation
Et cetera.
All the while, he writes that all of these other writers have gotten things wrong or misinterpreted things. He is the one who misinterpreted the area, misunderstood Taliesin, Wright's family, and Wright's background.
If you want to know about Wright, read Meryle Secrest's biography. If you want to know about Taliesin I, get _Taliesin 1911-1914: Wright Studies, volume I_, ed. Narciso Menocal (this will also provide you with a Taliesin I floor plan). If you want to read about Wright's relationship with Mamah Borthwick, read Nancy Horan's book, _Loving Frank_. It's historical fiction that is better researched than _Death in a Prairie House_. |
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