“Payne’s memoir about his late brother is a book that is, as much as anything, a study in the power of inexhaustible candor.”

“…a superhonest, affecting personal narrative; Payne writes about his childhood, his parents, and his career with a novelist’s sensitivity to detail.”

Listen to the interview here.

Sara Nelson, Editorial Director of Amazon.com:

An Amazon Best Book of August 2015: Imagine Mary Karr’s best poetic prose superimposed on material reminiscent of Pat Conroy and you begin to get an idea of what you’re in for with Barefoot to Avalon, a deeply moving memoir of brotherly love and loss. Payne, a novelist, settles his story around the horrific death of his brother, George A., a death he witnessed from his rear view mirror as the two caravanned from Vermont to North Carolina. In this case, George A. – the initial is always used, in direct address as well as exposition, because it always was used in the Payne family; this is one of the many tiny details that marks the memoir as authentic and heartbreaking – had come north to help his big brother move. The norm, however, at least in the years immediately prior, was the other way around; David, while a struggling writer, usually took care of George A., whose long-undiagnosed mental illness had led him to lose friends, family, and a promising career. (But make no mistake: David was no angel and admits to envying George A. and competing with him every step of the way.) By looping back and forth in time – with more than a few chilling scenes of both brothers’ adolescent struggles with their alcoholic, violent father and denial-champion of a mother – Payne paints a portrait of dysfunction that is both sad and infuriating: George A’s death might have been an accident, but he’d been suffering so mightily for so long, it seemed predetermined. What happened to those boys as children – and how guilt- and grief-ridden David spins out of control once his brother is gone – will make every reader cringe, and many cry. – Sara Nelson

…it’s hard not to be taken aback, then captivated, by the bluntness, Payne’s unwillingness to shy away from not only the difficulties in the story being told, but also in the act of trying to tell the story. This dynamic burns starkly and powerfully through all of “Barefoot to Avalon,” a book that is, as much as anything, a study in the power of inexhaustible candor… like the best memoirs, it’s about something far harder to pin down, something unspecific and ineffable in the way time moves and lives fade, the moments that none of us can get back…Payne’s writing is loose, confident and snappy, and he has a rare ability to distill enormous scope into a single sentence, sometimes a single image…He gives us the ambiguities of real life, a story that is sometimes hard to take but always worth it.”

–Lucas Mann, San Francisco Chronicle

On Nov. 8, 2000, David Payne’s younger brother, George A., died in a car wreck north of Roanoke, Va. Payne, the lead driver in an impromptu two-vehicle caravan, watched the whole thing unfold in his rearview mirror. His brother was helping him transport belongings from Vermont to North Carolina as part of a move.

This is the impetus for “Barefoot to Avalon: A Brother’s Story,” Payne’s first book of nonfiction after five novels, including “Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street.” To say “Barefoot to Avalon” is about the accident, however, is to underestimate what Payne has achieved….

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a description of a sibling love-hate bond that so many readers will understand intimately: “I loved him, but there’s that other part, you see, that wished to beat him.”

— Kate Tuttle

“His 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

Payne explores his family and all its troubled relationships and history, striking universal notes that will hit you where you live…

— John Railey

“Powerful, gripping, raw and tender.”