The Marrowbone Marble Company - by Glenn Taylor (Paperback)

About the Book

M. Glenn Taylor s plain spoken eloquence on labor, race, and war recalls the voices in Studs Terkel s inspired Working." The Marrowbone Marble Company "is a novel of stirring clarity and power. Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Lark and Termite"Author M. Glenn Taylor was nominated for the National Book Critic s Circle Award for his novel The" Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart. "Taylor returns spectacularly with The Marrowbone Marble Company, "a sweeping story set against the changing landscape of post-World War II America that recalls The Story of Edgar Sawtelle "and the early lyrical work of Cormac McCarthy. A masterwork of Southern fiction that the National Book Award-winning author of Spartina," John "Casey, calls, a terrific rough-and-tumble novel, The Marrowbone Marble Company "is a gift from a truly exhilarating American voice."

Book Synopsis

"M. Glenn Taylor's plain spoken eloquence on labor, race, and war recalls the voices in Studs Terkel's inspired Working. The Marrowbone Marble Company is a novel of stirring clarity and power."
--Jayne Anne Phillips, author of Lark and Termite

Author M. Glenn Taylor was nominated for the National Book Critic's Circle Award for his novel The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart. Taylor returns spectacularly with The Marrowbone Marble Company, a sweeping story set against the changing landscape of post-World War II America that recalls The Story of Edgar Sawtelle and the early lyrical work of Cormac McCarthy. A masterwork of Southern fiction that the National Book Award-winning author of Spartina, John Casey, calls, "a terrific rough-and-tumble novel," The Marrowbone Marble Company is a gift from a truly exhilarating American voice.

From the Back Cover

1941. Loyal Ledford works the swing shift at the Mann Glass factory in Huntington, West Virginia. He courts Rachel, the boss's daughter, a company nurse with coal black hair. But when Pearl Harbor is attacked, Ledford, like so many young men of his time, sets his life on a new course.

Upon his return from service in the war, Ledford starts a family with Rachel but chafes under the authority at Mann Glass. He is a lost man, disconnected from the present and haunted by his violent past, until he meets his cousins the Bonecutter brothers. Their land, mysterious, elemental Marrowbone Cut, calls to Ledford, and it is there that The Marrowbone Marble Company is slowly forged. Over the next two decades, the factory grounds become a vanguard of the civil rights movement and a home for those intent on change. Such a home inevitably invites trouble, and Ledford must fight for his family.

Returning to the West Virginia territory of his critically acclaimed novel, The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, Glenn Taylor recounts the transformative journey of a man and his community.

Review Quotes

"This novel gives us all we want in fiction: a compelling story, beautiful writing, an impeccable rendering of time and place, and fully realized characters. The Marrowbone Marble Company is a book that, once started, readers will find hard to put down, and, once finished, find even harder to forget." - Ron Rash, author of Serena and Burning Bright
"Captivating . . . . A rich stew, one well-worth savoring." - Denver Post
"The Marrowbone Marble Company offers more than just another depiction of a man aspiring to create his own utopia in the midst of post-World War II America. This sophomore release by Glenn Taylor assumes a harrowing and honest look at issues of race and class as told through the socially astute Loyal Ledford...[a] satisfying, substantive portrayal of a conventional West Virginia man...this fluid story line is soulful, complex and filled with struggle and loss, righteousness and redemption in the rough-and-tumble world of West Virginia." - Express Milwaukee
"THE MARROWBONE MARBLE COMPANY is a novel about one man's mountaintop idealism, but written in so earthy and sweat-streaked a way that it never runs out of oxygen." - Christian Science Monitor
"Taylor has created a remarkably complex, soulful, and provocative historical novel righteous in its perspective on America's struggle to live up to its core beliefs." - Booklist (starred review)
"A beautifully realized novel...Central among [the characters] is Loyal Ledford himself. A renegade who rejects the precast American Dream for something more elusive, perhaps even unattainable, this scarred, flawed man embodies a familiar component of our national character: hope." - Bookpage
"A novel of stirring clarity and power [that] speaks unforgettably from a half century ago to issues still unresolved in American life. Taylor has composed a hymn to the human heart." - Jayne Anne Phillips, author of LARK AND TERMITE
"A terrific rough-and-tumble novel. It's set in West Virginia, which may be the last state in the US where whole-hearted goodness, violence, hard work and hard ways are all just a breath apart. Glenn Taylor gets it all in--both in sharp detail and in bold broad strokes." - John Casey, National Book Award-winning author of SPARTINA
"Taylor writes with restrained eloquence of the troubles that await anyone who refuses either to be used or to use others. The preoccupations of Taylor's extraordinary character, Loyal Ledford, are not with the resolution of his own particular story, but with the material and moral disturbances of larger historical conflicts, and their frequently painful disruptions. Taylor's description of America from 1941 to 1969 is both intimate and immense, questioning our certainties as he unmasks both the world and the self in all their mystery." - Susanna Moore, author of IN THE CUT
"Taylor's socially astute and fast-moving sophomore novel is earthy, authentic, and a testament to his literary talent." - Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Taylor fluidly composes a portrait of a man whose sheer fortitude makes molehills out of mountains...powerful prose...a big, ambitious book that falls somewhere between the sweeping epics of Richard Russo and the masculine bravado of Ken Kesey's best work." - Kirkus Reviews
"Taylor, a mesmerizing storyteller fascinated by small wonders as well as epic change, balances rage with tenderness as his intriguing and heroic characters effect a small revolution. With an acute sense of nature's mysteries as well as human suffering and redemption, Taylor has created a remarkably complex, soulful, and provocative historical novel righteous in its perspective on America's struggle to live up to its core beliefs." - Booklist (starred review)
"Not many young writers are willing to allow a cottonmouth, slow and methodical, to climb up his arm and shoulder and neck and, opening his mouth, let its killer little head bump around inside for a look-even in their fiction. Full of wonder and belief, Glenn Taylor has fearless ambition and dangerous talent. He is, like this, his first book, out to make some big claims on your attention." - Dagoberto Gilb, author of Woodcuts of Women and The Flowers