NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - A "riveting" (The Wall Street Journal) and "wonderfully entertaining" (The Boston Globe) account of Frank Lloyd Wright's life, told through the experiences of the four women who loved him. "Boyle handles the big themes--Wright the genius battling an uncomprehending, philistine world and Wright the man loving and loathing his women--with extraordinary brio."--San Francisco Chronicle Is it easy to live with a genius? Frank Lloyd Wright's life was one long, howling struggle against the bonds of convention, whether aesthetic, social, moral, or romantic. He never did what was expected, and he never let anything get in the way of his larger-than-life appetites and visions.
Wright's triumphs and defeats were always tied to the women he loved:
Olgivanna Milanoff, an imperious Montenegrin beauty who was a student of the Russian mystic Gurdjieff and was known by Wright's apprentices as "the Dragon Lady";
Maude Miriam Noel, a passionate Southern belle with a mean temper and a fondness for morphine; the spirited
Mamah Borthwick Cheney, tragically murdered at Wright's Wisconsin estate, Taliesin, in 1914; and his young first wife,
Kitty Tobin, with whom he had six children.
T.C. Boyle deftly captures these very different women and, in doing so, creates a sexy, gripping drama about marriage, the bargains men and women make, and the privileges and pitfalls of genius and fame.
