Nancy, Thank you for coming by. It's good to know you will be following this discussion. If anything strikes you and you feel like posting about any aspect of this story, you know you will be welcome.
What is noteworthy of course is the fact that this story did not come from the fertile imagination of a romance writer but it [ireally[/i]happened to
real people - one of them world-renowned - a hundred years ago, and books are still being written about them, like other star-crossed lovers in history.
The italicized pages, a sort of introduction, are written in the first person and could be a journal entry, either real but - if not - very well invented. The year is 1914, a significant milepost.
In the next chapter we read how it had started, several years earlier. The narrative proceeds in chronological order. It is obvious that Edwin Cheney and Mamah were mismatched, which Mamah discovered a lot earlier than her husband. FLW was clearly a charmer. His dynamism, his plan to revolutionize architectural concepts and the work he showed her (her neighbor's house), proved irresistible. Edwin Cheney, who loved order and precision and "simple things" could be no competitor. The attraction was strong, mutual and not acted on originally.
The new house FLW had built for them was finished, except for a garage. Planning and building it became a pretext, a convenient subterfuge for casual meetings. At the time Mamah had only one child, John, and still lived in her family home with members of her family. No wonder Edwin Cheney longed for a home of his/their own!
At some point Mamah pulled back from FLW and discovered she was carrying Edwin's child. A year (two?) after the birth of her daughter Martha she reconnected with FLW. This time all barriers fell. Interestingly enough, it was she, Mamah, who sought him out (at the lecture)! She had also cultivated FLW's wife, Catherine aka Kit.
JoanP, we can only shake our heads in dismay at such heedlessness and irresponsibility. Both in their early thirties, they behave like teenagers, oblivious to any consequences. This is definitely not admirable behavior. But it happened!
Joan, in our f2f discussion we pronounced Mamah the way it is written. We had only the afternoon
![Smiley :)](https://seniorlearn.org/forum/Smileys/default/smiley.gif)
to do justice to the book.