Death in a Prairie House Quotes

“The first mystery is this: Why did Frank Lloyd Wright, a committed champion of domestic virtues and a driven artist on the very cusp of achieving his lifelong professional ambition, desert his wife Catherine and their six children in 1909 (and again in 1911) to run off with Mamah Cheney, thereby crippling both marriage and career at a single blow?”
― William R. Drennan, Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders

“Way back in 1903, Wright's sons John and Lloyd, accompanied by Catherine's mother, attended a Christmas season play, Mr. Blue Beard Jr., at Chicago's Iroquois Theater. Just as an octet took up the first strains of “In the Pale Moonlight,” a calcium lamp exploded, engulfing the whole stage in flame. The fire spread everywhere. In the ensuing panic, more than six hundred men, women, and children died horribly, including everyone in the balcony. Mrs. Tobin was barely able to save herself and her two grandsons. John wrote, “I shall always remember the expression on Dad's face when he learned that we, all three, were safe and unharmed.”
― William R. Drennan, Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders