Elgan and Grace

A Twentieth-Century Saga by L E Taylor

In the twilight of his life, a son examines fragments of his family's moral trek through the played-out century. Historically authentic settings and mores rekindle the past: backwoods Kentucky… a booming young Detroit… anti-German hostility during The Great War… whiskey-running and speakeasies... twists of fortune after The Crash… the Machiavellian inner sanctums of the world's largest industry… the World War II American home front… sea-changes in society and in private lives that accompanied Post-War normalcy.

Gradually, the saga coheres on the pathways of its two protagonists: Elgan, a complex, introspective Southern boy whose demons drive him to escape a numbing poverty of the coal fields for a new identity; Grace, the stalwart city girl, paternally orphaned at seven, a realist making the best of a damaged life with irony and industry.

The pathways to faith are badly marked and studded with mines. The pilgrim, however brave, is often his own greatest obstacle. Elgan and Grace is one man’s witness to what really happened. It is written with passion, literary care, and good humor, for these times and for the generations that come next.

L E Taylor

L.E.Taylor is a product of the 1930s and '40s, the first son of a Middle American family—a resilient hybrid of Scots-Irish coal miners and poor German immigrants, who converge at the social and economic battleground of an age: Detroit.

Born and bred in Michigan, the author is a former teacher and business owner, and holds degrees from Western Michigan University, and The University of Michigan Graduate School. He lives a modest life in North Texas. The author began writing this story on impulse in 1995. One day, to quell some now-forgotten vexation, he closed his office door and began to pen a true episode that had haunted him for decades. It became Chapter One. Over the following three years Elgan & Grace evolved in all the candor, passion, and historical scope that come alive on these pages.