New in Paper: Loving Frank by Nancy Horan

In case you missed all the hoopla when Horan’s debut novel was released in hardcover last year -- and there was a lot of it -- Ballantine dropped the paperback a couple of days ago. I feel a little odd offering up additional buzz about Loving Frank, a book that’s had swarms written about it, but it really is wonderful: still worth talking about, but now easier to bring to the beach or hide at work.

What we have here is a skillfully fictionalized retelling of the relationship between mega-architect Frank Lloyd Wright and the woman who was probably the love of the arrogant architect’s life, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Horan’s treatment is elegant enough that those of us without an intimate knowledge of the relationship will have trouble distinguishing fact from fiction. It doesn’t matter. Here’s what does: Loving Frank transports.