Gravesend Light
Joe’s subject is Little Roanoke, an isolated coastal fishing village threatened by the encroachment of modern civilization. Here he meets two people who will alter the course of his future: Ray Bristow, a fisherman and ex-con who teaches Joe more then just the ropes of one of the world’s most dangerous professions; and Day Shaughnessey, a Yale-educated OB-GYN and ardent feminist whose pro-choice views are at odds with the deeply religious people of Little Roanoke. As Joe and Day embark on a passionate love affair, his growing respect for the villagers’ traditions, their heritage of pride and sacrifice, comes sharply into conflict with Day’s liberal beliefs.
Culminating in a savage winter storm at sea, Gravesend Light is an unforgettable story of family, love, heroism and personal redemption.“If you don’t belong to a book club, start one with this book… the grains of this plot eventually gain an irresistible momentum till it begins to move like an avalanche, crashing toward a spectacular natural disaster and a moral calamity… The novel reaches its climax in an explosively told disaster at sea that makes it clear there are no perfect storms. Payne is a rough, but trustworthy captain, and this is a story that rolls and pitches through all the moral waves of modern life.” –Ron Charles, The Christian Science Monitor
Newly Reissued, Available From Ingram
Early from the Dance
(ISBN 9798218155155)
“Reading stretches of Early From the Dance is like attending a play in which every line is a curtain line. Payne has the deepest human sympathy for his characters and knowledge of the heart; everyone in this book comes alive… Payne is extraordinarily gifted.”
–The Boston Globe
Ruin Creek
(ISBN 9798218155186)
"I begin with what may seem a bold observation: David Payne is the most gifted American novelist of his generation. Ruin Creek is the best new novel I've read this year. As in Early from the Dance, he sets his literary table on the Carolina Outer Banks, a literary territory as palpable in these pages as. the Salinas Valley in John Steinbeck's."
—The Dallas Morning News
Gravesend Light
(ISBN 9798218155193)
“If you don’t belong to a book club, start one with this book... the grains of this plot eventually gain an irresistible momentum till it begins to move like an avalanche, crashing toward a spectacular natural disaster and a moral calamity.”
–The Christian Science Monitor
Barefoot to Avalon
“This is a brave book with beautiful sentences on every page...Payne writes with the intensity and urgency of a man trying to save his own life.” —Carmela Ciuraru, The New York Times “A memoir as raw, intimate and courageous as a series of midnight confessions fueled by a bottle of vodka... [Payne's] barefoot journey, every brave and bloody step over broken glass, shows how even the darkest emotions and deepest wounds can yield to love.” —Gina Webb, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Back to Wando Passo
Back to Wando Passo quivers with authentic life and is so bold in concept and audacious in scope that it seems like the summing up and exclamation point of a great writer's career. The novel contains everything -- from the horror of 1860s rice culture slavery, to the perils of modern love, to the history of rock and roll . . . Payne takes on the whole known world and pulls it off with the deftness of a writer in his prime.” –Pat Conroy
Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street
“This novel, with its glorious style and rich profusion of detail, should remind readers of the time, fading into memory, when the works of John Barth began to burst on the literary horizon... absorbing and deeply rewarding.”
–The Washington Post