The Women

I think Frank Lloyd Wright is a fascinating man.  Part genius and part con man, he is a mixture of contradictions.  That is why I read The Women by T. C. Boyle.  This book focuses on the four women in Frank's life.  There was his first wife and mother to six of his children, Kitty.  Then he left her to live with Mamah Cheney even though he was shamed by the press and his neighbors and he lost business because of it.  When she was murdered and the house he built for her burned to ashes, he married Miriam Noel who was addicted to morphine.  While still married to her he took up with Olgivanna and had children with her.  All of his relationships were overlapping!  Frank thought he was better than the average person and laws were for ordinary people, not him.  He didn't pay his bills and he swindled people out of money all while designing some of the best buildings in the country.  He designed the Imperial Hotel in Japan in part to get away from the unforgiving press who would haunt his front door in Wisconsin.  This was a fascinating book.  I guess if I had one complaint is that it described the death of Mamah in a gratuitously violent manner.  As a historical fiction no one could have known the gruesome details that were mentioned.