Books

Women and Wild Savages

Women and Wild Savages is a historical novel set in turn-of-the-century Vienna, where art, architecture, desire, and reputation collide.

Blending fact and fiction, history and romance, the novel follows Lina Loos—an aspiring actress and the daughter of Viennese coffeehouse owners—through her turbulent marriage to the celebrated architect Adolf Loos. At eighteen, Lina is vivid, ambitious, and eager to become herself. When Loos unexpectedly proposes, she says yes, believing marriage will open the door to a larger life.

Instead, she discovers that progressive ideals do not always survive behind closed doors.

As her husband’s emotional distance deepens, Lina finds sympathy in the company of Café Central’s beloved poet Peter Altenberg and danger in the attention of Heinz Lang, the charming young son of one of Loos’s activist friends. Desire, jealousy, and betrayal soon pull her into a scandal that will change all of their lives.

Surrounded by men who want to cast her as wife, muse, child, lover, or symbol, Lina must fight to reclaim the woman she once imagined becoming.

A tragic yet empowering story of love, selfhood, and liberation, Women and Wild Savages gives voice to a woman caught between the roles assigned to her and the life she longs to claim.