Loyal Ledford of Huntington, West Virginia, is the unassuming central figure of THE MARROWBONE MARBLE COMPANY , the lyrical second novel from Texas State grad GLENN TAYLOR , whose debut, T he Ballad of Trenchmouth Taggart, was a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award. Ledford’s world is shaped by three pivotal events: He is orphaned in 1935, when his drunken father crashes the family’s Model A pickup; he kills a man in cold blood during World War II; and he quits his job at the Mann Glass Company in protest against its racist policies. Ledford becomes a devoted family man and pacifist, but we’re still caught off guard when, in the midst of a deeply segregated South, he builds a toy-marble factory and an adjoining settlement as a progressive experiment in communal living. His partners include an African American refugee from Mann Glass and a freethinking professor of philosophy, and when word gets out of black and white living together, the community inevitably
becomes the object of racial violence. The Marrowbone Marble Company gives off a slight whiff of self-righteousness—not startling considering its themes of social justice—but its openhearted sincerity is welcome and refreshing in our cynical times. Ecco, $24.99