Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders | 
| Author: William R. Drennan
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 36651
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 230
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.3 x 0.9
ISBN: 0299222101
Dewey Decimal Number: 364.15230977576
EAN: 9780299222109
ASIN: 0299222101
Publication Date: January 18, 2007
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 13 more reviews...
 The Best Account of the Tragedy May 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
Review for Death n a Prairie House May 15, 2008
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 April 20, 2008
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
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_.
book: Death in a Prairie House March 29, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Having been a Frank Lloyd Wright "fan" for many years, and having taught a short course on his architecture at the college where I was a professor, before retirement, I appreciated the in depth research on this "scandalous" period of FLW's life. A daughter lives in Oak Park and I toured many of FLW's Prairie houses there, as well as visiting "Falling Water" from a later period of his career. Book arrived in good time, in excellent condition. I will lead a discussion next month on this book for my book club. After all, I recommended this book for discussion.
 A brief, believable professor's eye view of the Taliesin tragedy January 13, 2008
5 out of 8 found this review helpful
Author William Drennan, professor of English (and it shows), wastes little time and few words in summarizing the events leading up to a horrific crime: the murder of his lover, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, her two young children (visiting the estate), and (eventually) four workers, who were killed by an ax-wielding arsonist servant at the home Frank Lloyd Wright designed for life with his mistress, Ms. Cheney. Theories on the motive, never firmly established because the killer died before trial, include the perpetrator's mental instability or possibly revenge for verbal insults by one or more of the victims. Although the subtitle, Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders, indicates murder as the central theme, at least half of the (pre-reference section) pages leading up to the chapter entitled "A Summer Day That Changed the World" Murder at Taliesin, are filled with background, primarily of Wright: his ancestry, (pre-marriage) family life, career, married life, relationship with Cheney, and negative treatment by the press and people of Oak Park, Illinois. Drennan shares his views in several places, notably: in modifying the accepted version of the murderous rampage to better fit the evidence and that Wright was skilled at structural design of buildings. His examples, the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, which performed well during earthquakes in the 1920s, and Midway Gardens in Chicago, which because of its stout construction, was difficult to demolish, confirm the latter point, others, notably Fallingwater in Pennsylvania and the Freeman House in California, which have not fared as well structurally, do not. The issue of Wright's structural design skills and the sensationalist title and cover photo (ax prominently displayed) aside, Drennan has done an excellent job of putting together a short, reader friendly book about the circumstances surrounding the Taliesin murders. It would have been even better about fifty percent longer, with more information on some of Wright's many architectural masterpieces. Hands down better than Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.
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