THE MARBLE ORCHARD (237 pp.) — Margaret Boylen — Random House ($3.50).
"What a swellegant day for a picnic," burbles Ne'er-Do-Weil Ned Claypoole, as the platitudes clatter with the clods over his mother's coffin. But for Ned's 16-year-old daughter Lovey, the April day of deliverance from grandma's tyranny turns heavy with foreboding. Lovey, The Beautiful Blind Girl, can see again—but she has cunningly preserved her three-week secret. For sight regained means Paradise Lost: an end to the antic freedom accorded Lovey by the town, and eviction from the cemetery's marble orchard which, blind, she has been allowed to make her private playground....
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