The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright
The True Story of Mass Murder in Paradise
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- ¥2,000
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The scandal. The genius. The murder that shocked America.
Frank Lloyd Wright was more than the mind behind America’s most iconic buildings—he was a man whose turbulent private life captivated a nation. The famous architect’s stormy marriage to Kitty Wright and his infamous affair with another woman, Mamah Borthwick, ignited one of the country’s first celebrity scandals, splashed across headlines from coast to coast.
Then, in August 1914, scandal turned to horror. A tragedy at Taliesin, the Wisconsin home Wright built as a monument to love, shook the very foundation of Wright’s life—and catapulted him back to the front pages of newspapers across the country as readers clamored for glimpses of his very darkest moments.
In The Killer and Frank Lloyd Wright, New York Times bestselling author Casey Sherman delves beyond the myth of Wright’s genius to reveal a man of relentless ambition, consuming passion, and devastating loss. With haunting intimacy and propulsive storytelling, Sherman delivers a portrait of an artist who could not escape the shadows of his own making—and who rose, again and again, from the ashes.
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Journalist Sherman (Blood in the Water) recounts the murder of Frank Lloyd Wright's lover in this fascinating work of true crime. In 1909, Wright made headlines for running off to Europe with his neighbor's wife, translator and feminist advocate Martha "Mamah" Borthwick Cheney. The couple were hounded by reporters abroad, so when they returned from Europe, Wright built the Taliesin compound in Wisconsin where they lived together happily. Then, in 1914, while Wright was in Chicago designing Midway Gardens, a handyman killed Mamah, her two children, and several of Wright's staff before burning Taliesin down. Sherman lingers on the mystery of the act—the suspect swallowed acid and died in jail while awaiting trial, so historians remain unsure if he was criminally insane or carrying out a targeted attack—but pays greater attention to the ways that Mamah's death haunted Wright, who considered her the love of his life. Though he remarried, Wright was buried next to Mamah at Taliesin in 1959. Sherman exhibits both a novelist's sense of pace and a reporter's eye for detail in this arresting true crime narrative of great passion and great tragedy. It's a heartbreaker. Photos.
