Do you ever hate to finish a great novel you’re reading? I just finished Loving Frank and I already miss the friendship I had developed with the main character. Of course, it is so much worse because she in fact did die a gruesome death at age 45.
This historically accurate novel was so intelligent and well written! I felt like I had grown close to Mamah Borthwick, and lived with her throughout her difficult struggles to live from the heart and live a life full of authenticity. And now she’s back at the library and I’ve lost a friend.
I never fully realized how much I live my life through the books I read, and experience true friendships with their characters. As a kid I read lots of biographies. I guess on some level I thought it was a good time to study how others had lived their lives, to help me figure out how to live mine.
Famous American women were my heroes! How did they find the guts to live so courageously in such difficult times? What was their secret to fighting against incredible criticism and cultural odds, to succeed in all the ways they did, and in that way change how everyone in the world viewed women. These were true heroes whose lives took me all sorts of places I could have never gone otherwise!
These days historical fiction is my favorite type of fiction, and the author of Loving Frank, Nancy Horan, went to great lengths to study and understand the life Mamah Borthwick lived. She even tracked down a few letters she had written almost a hundred years ago! This is the type of fiction I can get lost in and I hate when it ends.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for bringing this book to my attention! Can’t wait to read it.
I think you liked Mamah more than I did, but I agree that it was a great book! I just blogged about my book club’s discussion of it.