David Payne

Adam Jenrette, thirty-one and a successful Manhattan artist, has been hiding from his past for too long. When a relative's death calls him home to North Carolina, he is pulled into an intense encounter with his own eighteen-year-old self and with the two most important people in his life -- Cary Kinlaw, his best …

From the tranquility of an Oriental monastery to the tumult of the New York Stock Exchange, the hero of this amazing novel embarks on a quest for a father, a fortune and the ultimate essence of the universe. The illegitimate son of a Chinese woman and an American combat pilot, he was reared as an orphan by Taoist …

“Masterful . . . Somewhere between Faulkner and Conroy.”—The Denver Post In Ruin Creek, David Payne revisits North Carolina’s windswept Outer Banks and the Madden family. Writing in the contrapuntal voices of eleven-year-old Joey and his parents, May and Jimmy, David Payne portrays a family that breaks apart, heals, …

Young anthropologist Joe Madden retreats to his family's summer home on Little Roanoke on North Carolina's Outer Banks to conduct an ethnographic study of the fishermen and their families, taking a job on a fishing boat as part of his study and embarking on a passionate love affair with a feminist doctor at odds with …

An Amazon Best Book of 2015, A Kirkus Reviews’ Best Book of 2015 A brave book with beautiful sentences on every page.”New York TimesPiercing...a tour de force.”Los Angeles TimesIn 2000, while moving his household from Vermont to North Carolina, David Payne watched from his rearview mirror as his younger brother, …