Short historical account of the Taliesin murders. If you have read Loving Frank A Novel I suggest reading this concurrently. Or perhaps afterwards. Historically-based novels always bring out a thirst in me to find out what really happened. Wright was not a very nice man, but even so, his flight to Europe with the wife of a client remains puzzling and Nancy Horan's novel provides as reasonable an explanation as anything else since we have very little about her. Wright himself barely noted her existence in his notes.The murders themselves, a servant/employee ran amok killing Mamah and her children as well as some other construction workers, may well have had an enormous influence on changing Wright's architectural style, which became much more fortress-like.This is an excellent companion book to Loving Frank. It provides a wealth of factual detail that supplements Horam's excellent novel. The irony is that apparently people in southern Wisconsin still believe that Wright was the murderer in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Clearly his years of stiffing the local merchants did not help his reputation.
The author suggests that the fire and murders at Taliesen were far more important than the mere facts of the case. "The murders involved the century's single most important residential design and the country's most celebrated and distinctive architect." Mahma was well on her way to becoming a prominent feminist. The fire also destroyed Wright's folio of drawings, which, Drennan suggests, set back Wright's fame in the United States by years. Drennan proposes more importantly, that because of the fire, Wright's designs became "more insular, more labyrinthine, even more fortress-like. . . [and:] the slaughter at Taliesen may well have exerted a significant influence on American residential design throughout the remainder of the twentieth century." (p. 6)
Lots of information, but only 3 stars because it felt a little rushed and could have provided more detail, I think.
