Death in a Prairie House

In August of 1914, as the first shots of WWI echoed across Europe, the family and staff of architect Frank Lloyd Wright sat down for lunch in his Wisconsin home. The servant calmly and expertly served the soup - and then pulled out a hatchet. Without warning he killed Wright's lover and her children before setting fire to the building and hacking away at the staff as they tried to flee.

Seven people would die that day, making it the bloodiest mass murder in Wisconsin history before 2005.

Wright was in Chicago that day, but the loss of his lover and the partial destruction of Taliesin, his Prairie House masterpiece, would shape his life and the history of architecture. Death in a Prairie House by William R. Drennan, tells the untold story of those murders.

For many years my wife and I lived two blocks from three examples of Wright's work, and as a Wisconsin native and resident he lives on as a hero in the state. That wasn't always the case.

A few years before the attack Wright abruptly left his wife and children to take a married mother of two as his lover. In defiance of convention, he flaunted this affair and eventually took up residence with her at Taliesin. That is questionable behavior now, much less in 1914, and all of it neatly justified by a hodge-podge of collected aphorisms.

In return, many people in America looked upon him with scorn and distrust.

Did that play a role in inspiring the killer? No one ever discovered the true motive behind the attacks - the African-American assailant starved himself to death in jail before the trial, having attempted suicide upon capture - and everything from religious indignation, racial tension, and a grand conspiracy was offered up for approval.

The book does a fine job of exploring the early life of Wright and piecing together the attack and its aftermath. There are a few notable little errors - one on the first page (!) - but in each case they are almost certainly insignificant details (but ones that should be corrected in future editions). As far at the writing goes it is smooth and polished and shows an expert hand.

Highly entertaining, highly recommended.