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Published May 2010
368 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
1941. Loyal Ledford works the swing shift tending furnace at the Mann Glass factory in Huntington, West Virginia. He courts Rachel, the boss's daughter, a company nurse with spike-straight posture and 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 he 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, with help from an unlikely bunch, 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 the war on poverty, 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 the critically acclaimed The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, Glenn Taylor recounts the transformative journey of a man and his community. Told in clean and powerful prose in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and John Irving, The Marrowbone Marble Company takes a harrowing look at the issues of race and class throughout the tumultuous 1950s and '60s. It is a story of struggle and loss, righteousness and redemption, and it can only be found in the hills of Marrowbone.
"Starred Review. Taylor's socially astute and fast-moving sophomore novel is earthy, authentic, and a testament to his literary talent. " - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. 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
"A huge ensemble cast and a complex social narrative may put casual readers off, but the rewards for those who see this one through are satisfying indeed." - Kirkus Reviews
"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
This information about The Marrowbone Marble Company was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
This is Taylor's second novel following The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, an NBCC-award finalist. He teaches English and fiction writing at Harper College in suburban Chicago, where he lives with his wife and two sons.
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