The Marrowbone Marble Company: A Novel [Hardcover]

Glenn Taylor (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 2010

A powerful novel of love and war, righteousness and redemption, and the triumph of the human spirit. From the author of the critically-acclaimed The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart comes this sweeping novel of love and war, power and oppression, faith and deception, over the course of three defining American decades. At the end of the Pacific War, where he has witnessed terrible things, Loyal Ledford is a lost man, disconnected from the present yet divorced from his dissolute, violent past. His life is set on a new course when he meets his cousins, Dimple and Wimpy, the Bonecutter brothers. Their land, mysterious, elemental Marrowbone Cut, calls to him 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. Inevitably, such a home invites trouble, and Ledford must fight for his family. Told in clear and powerful prose in the tradition of Cormac McCarthy and John Irving, The Marrowbone Marble Company recounts the transformative journey of a man and his community, taking a harrowing look at the issues of race and class throughout the tumultuous 1950s and '60s.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, May 2010: National Book Critics Circle Award-finalist M. Glenn Taylor's impresses with this second novel. The title is a mouthful, but seems just right given the satisfying and substantive story of a man determined to create his own utopia in the hardscrabble and racially-divided West Virginia of the post-war years. Loyal Ledford, a poor-as-dirt orphan, works the furnaces of the local glass factory, yet he plots his escape by joining the Marines. He soon finds himself in another purgatory--Guadalcanal--in the last years of WWII. With a wounded body and mind, Ledford returns home, determined to start a family and live on his own terms. On old family land, he rediscovers kin and builds a marble factory from the ground up with the help of two part-Indian cousins, an idealistic white preacher, and an African-American family. Within the novel's historic context, the small Marrowbone community, comprised of unique and open-minded souls is, like the marbles it produces, a perfect microcosm within a very imperfect world. --Lauren Nemroff

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Taylor returns to the West Virginia backdrop of his NBCC-award finalist The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart with a novel that spans almost three decades in the life of an orphan. Between attending college classes and working as a factory furnace tender at Mann Glass Company, 18-year-old Loyal Ledford keeps himself busy. But when WWII begins, he dutifully enlists in the Marine Corps, abandons his girlfriend (and boss's daughter), Rachel, and heads off to war, where he quells the trauma with whiskey. Ledford's homecoming is celebrated with a marriage to Rachel, a return to school and the glass factory, and the birth of two children. The ghosts of his wartime stint plague his psyche, but after meeting his part-Indian cousins, the Bonecutter brothers, and becoming enchanted with the family land where they live, Loyal and his cousins begin a marble manufacturing company. Soon, civil rights strife rips through the region, threatening the survival of Loyal's company and the future of his family. Taylor's socially astute and fast-moving sophomore novel is earthy, authentic, and a testament to his literary talent. (May)
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; First Edition. 1 in number line edition (May 11, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061923931
• ISBN-13: 978-0061923937
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #702,201 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New American Classic, May 11, 2010

By 

Philip Morehart (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Marrowbone Marble Company: A Novel (Hardcover)

The title of my review says it all. "The Marrowbone Marble Company" is a work that will find a place in the canon of great American literature. Without question. Its scope is incredible, running from the hells of Guadalcanal to west-side Chicago horsetracks to the Appalachian foothills; through a nation at war with the world during WWII to its own internal war over segregation; down to interpersonal struggles (some tragic) between family, friends and neighbors that are immediately familiar.

Taylor weaves the story of the idealistic Marrowbone Cut families and their friends and enemies in the surrounding West Virginia environs through world-changing events beautifully with a true story-teller's grace. The attention to detail--both historical, emotional and technical (the art of glass marble production is fascinating)--is staggering. While a very serious tale, "Marrowbone" is funny to boot. This makes the work all the stronger. A character's quick, cutting retort or observation can be riotous, while also possessing a deeper meaning that cuts straight to the truth--much like real life. It's quite brilliant. Taylor's ear for the spoken word can be thanked for this. He writes dialogue like no other (those who have read his first book, "The Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart", can attest to this).

Simply put: This is one incredible book. A new American classic. Absolutely.

30 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Story and characters diminished for larger themes, April 27, 2010

By 

switterbug (Austin, Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: The Marrowbone Marble Company: A Novel (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I admire the scope of this tough, ambitious book more than I ultimately enjoyed it. Early on, Taylor convinced me that this was going to be a character-driven book. But as the cast grew and the characterizations diminished, I ceased to inhabit it fully. The essential ingredient--individual portrayal--blurs into the larger themes of racial unrest within the genesis of the Civil Rights Movement. People became mere sketches. Except for the main protagonist, Loyal Ledford, the cast was populated by archetypes and one-dimensional figures. The author has a talent for earthy, gritty prose and his rendering of place is evocative. The soil and air of Marrowbone, West Virginia gets in your pores. But about one-quarter way through the book, it starts to meander, sag, and make its high points with platitudes.

Loyal Ledford was orphaned as a young boy in 1935 by a reckless, drunk father. He lingers in Huntington, West Virginia, tending the furnace at night at The Mann Glass factory and squires the boss's daughter, Rachel, a company nurse. During the day, he goes to the local college. But he suffers from ennui and abruptly enlists as a serviceman in World War II. He returns after the war a haunted man from the horrors he has witnessed and the things he has done in the name of war. He is reemployed at Mann Glass, this time as a supervisor; marries Rachel; and starts a family. He befriends a black employee, Mack Wells, who has been subjected to ignorant prejudice. At night, Ledford is infected by abstract dreams that carry uncertain messages, which seem to be juxtapositions of past and future. He turns to whiskey for solace, which gradually alienates him from his home life.

Ledford is thoroughly disgusted by racial prejudice at the workplace and in the county. He leaves Mann Glass and enlists the help of his distant relatives, The Bonecutter Brothers, in order to start up The Marrowbone Marble Company, an act inspired by his dreams. He persuades Mack to leave and come with him on this new venture. Loyal wants to do more than open a marble company. He desires to build a community that is based on kinship between black and white, a town that is built on integrity and the rights of human beings of all persuasions. One brick, one stone at a time, this town will grow to represent partnership and community between all ethnicities and colors.

He seeks out a scholar, Reverend Don Staples, who becomes his mentor in all things from philosophy to religion to basic human relationships. Staples is a gentle Christian, a thoughtful theologian, not a fire and brimstone preacher. Ledford quits drinking and reestablishes his role as husband and father. He is determined to put his demons at rest and forge a meaningful future at Marrowbone Cut. However, he also maintains a friendship with a fellow serviceman, Chicagoan Erm Bacigalupo, a crude man of little integrity--a bookie with mob connections.

It is a precarious undertaking to write a novel of race relations without tipping into the sententious and obvious. The author made it there by half, but it leaked around the edges. Don Staples became little more than a straw for Taylor's pulpit themes, and Rachel and Lizzie (Mack's wife) became mere wisps, undercut by the grandiloquence. In essence, the story was preaching to the choir (i.e. the reader). I do not need to be convinced that segregation was heinous, or to read pithy sermons about human decency and racial equality. I wanted to get back to the individual families.

Taylor's focus and cadence drifted as his architecture staggered under its own weight. He selected a few individuals to expand upon, such as Ledford's son, Orb. He gave him an Edgar Sawtell-ish construction, and his story, while precious, meandered until it also became fuel for the big battle of good vs evil. I felt cheated at the end. Taylor demonstrated an art for creating crisp and eccentric and fully realized characters at the opening of the book, then retreated from them and the story of two families--one white and one black--in order to fulfill his larger themes. Ironically, he filled his canvas with more and more characters--too many to handle with care--and I got weary of the soapbox, even though I agreed with his politics.

This could have been a five-star book; the author has a gift for storytelling, and, when he chooses to, solid characterization. The scenes of Ledford as a marine were powerful and the men in the corps were superbly depicted. The problems ensued when he traded out the rich and textured story for the grand platform. At that point, individuals became either caricatures or cursory sketches. Taylor gets his point across, and at times I was captivated; however, it was uneven and too often rhetorical. Nevertheless, I have faith in Taylor's skill as a writer, and I will undoubtedly be in line for his next book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading, May 11, 2010

By 

George M (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Marrowbone Marble Company: A Novel (Hardcover)

We live now, as the Chinese proverb says, in "interesting times." I read The Marrowbone Marble Company exhilarated by a singular and powerful idea: that in such times of extremity, the engine of change is still driven by people who are willing to shed hubris, temptation, and bias for what they know to be the right thing, a conviction that can never be achieved without critical mass. It's one of the many invaluable arguments Glenn Taylor makes in his sophomore novel. The setting is a symbiotic crossroads at one of the twentieth century's most dramatic historical moments; the prose is simple, straightforward, but never uninspired; and Taylor's characters are unforgettable. Read this novel and love it.