From T.C. Boyle comes this new historical fiction that is painstakingly researched and finely crafted–an account of the life of Frank Lloyd Wright, as told by the four women who loved him. Based on history but told as fiction, this book promises drugs, sex, temper, murder, love, and genius–it’s bound to be a good one. 
A needle. A syringe. The sort of thing the doctor used for injections. It was clinging to the smooth white flesh of her upper thigh, out of place, wrong, deeply wrong, and all he could think of was a parasite, some bloated tick or leech fastened there where it didn’t belong. Without thinking, he wrapped his fingers round the thing–cold metal and glass–and tugged it gently from her flesh, a speck of blood there, a yellowish contusion round the wound, and laid it on the sink. ‘Wake up,’ he said softly, taking her by the wrist. ‘Miriam, wake up.’
She gave him nothing.
He pulled her toward him, slapped her once, twice, and then again, till her eyes began to flutter, and where were the smelling salts? Did they have smelling salts? Her breath was rank, flowering in his face with the odor of the swamp plants, the cattails and pickerelweed and the other things that grew with their feet in the water of the pond. He was frightened, his thoughts charging one way and then the other. Should he call the physician? His mother? Mrs. Breen? But this was a private matter, wasn’t it? Between him and Miriam? Some mistake with her medicine, nothing to worry over, really, but shouldn’t she be in bed?
He clasped her to him then and tried to lift her, dripping, from the tub, but she was surprisingly heavy, her limbs slippery, fish-cold, and it was a job to shift her weight and gather her up. Her head fell forward across his shoulder, her hair pressed wet to his cheek, and with a final sucking contortion she was in his arms and he was edging out the door and her lips were moving. ‘Frank,’ she murmured, ‘what is it? What are you doing?’
