Plagued By Fire

A masterful portrait of the flawed creator of flawless buildings – Simon JenkinsPaul Hendrickson has a voice. He hasn’t written a line that lies flat on the page; his every sentence crinkles and burns with intelligence. In Plagued by Fire, he transmutes the story of America’s greatest architect into something unexpected and immediate—a life inscribed by race, fire, murder, and loss, all inseparable from creative brilliance. Like Hendrickson himself, this book is indispensable – T. J. Stiles, two-time winner of the Pulitzer PrizeThis is a biography worthy of the complexity of America’s iconic 20th century architect. It describes Wright’s facade and flaws, but then reaches down to the deep emotional underpinnings of his brilliant but at times difficult personality. By understanding the turmoil of his life, Hendrickson makes Wright more sympathetic – Walter Isaacson, author of Leonardo Da VinciA first-rate reporter and storyteller, Hendrickson not only explains Wright’s architecture in terms any layman can appreciate, but also connects that monolithic achievement with a living, breathing human being—an egomaniac and huckster, yes, but also a haunted, touching man who never, never gave up. Quite simply, you don’t know the whole story until you read this book – Blake Bailey, author of Cheever: A LifePaul Hendrickson has made a life of taking the figures we think we know, and revealing how little we actually understood them… Hendrickson has his work cut out for him with Wright, certainly the most written about architect in the world. Yet this, his longest book might be his most beautifully written – there’s a tone of absolute curiosity and respect, a judiciousness about probing a long-dead psyche, and a depth of understanding about how hidden demons often contribute to the art that artists make which [makes] this book absolutely riveting, as if all the buildings it describes have yet to be built – John Freeman * Literary Hub *Astonishingly artful and perceptive… There are very few biographers today writing at Hendrickson’s level. No one will walk away from this book without a deepened and transformed view of Wright’s life and times – Paula McLain, author of Love and RuinPaul Hendrickson has managed to take the life of one of the most complex and difficult of American artists and restore some measure of human-ness to him in this riveting work’ – Ken BurnsPaul Hendrickson’s beautifully composed, revelatory Plagued by Fire brilliantly combs through the tangled web Frank Lloyd Wright wove around his long-lived, complicated self. Written as if it’s a detective story, which in a way it is, this wonderfully unconventional biography captures Wright’s artistry while it plumbs the depths of his vulnerability, his compulsions, his work ethic, his cruelties, his defensiveness—and his humanity. What emerges is biography on a grand scale, large enough to encompass the restless, haunted architect who lived, breathed, and was burned by the twentieth century. Not to be missed – Brenda Wineapple, author of The Impeachers: The Trial of Andrew Johnson and the Dream of a Just NationPaul Hendrickson’s new biographical study…is a brave attempt to do something different… the contradictory Wright who emerges, both hateful and human, is probably the truest portrait of the man we have yet – Marcus Field * Evening Standard, Book of the Week *[Wright] shines out in all his maddening contradictions and vanities. Hendrickson has a very sharp ear for the tone of Wright’s diary entries, and an equally sharp eye for the subtleties of expression in a family photo…he teases significances from them… [Plagued by Fire is] painstakingly researched…[and a] moving book – Ivan Hewett * Daily Telegraph *

Paul Hendrickson is the author of the New York Times best seller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalist, Hemingway’s Boat- Everything He Loved in Life, and Lost, and Sons of Mississippi- A Story of Race and Its Legacy, which won the 2003 National Book Critics Circle Award. Since 1998 he has been on the faculty of the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania. For two decades before that, he was a staff writer at The Washington Post. Among his other books are Looking for the Light- The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott (1992 finalist for the NBCC award) and The Living and the Dead- Robert McNamara and Five Lives of a Lost War (1996 finalist for the National Book Award). He has been the recipient of writing fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lyndhurst Foundation, and the Alicia Patterson Foundation. In 2009 he was a joint visiting professor of documentary practice at Duke University and of American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the father of two grown sons, both of whom work in media, and he lives with his wife, Cecilia, a retired nurse, in Washington, D.C., and outside Philadelphia.

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