David Payne has been hailed as "the most gifted American novelist of his generation" (Boston Globe) and has been likened to "Pat Conroy or perhaps a Southern John Irving" (Winston-Salem Journal). Now, in his new novel, Payne introduces us to Ransom Hill, lead singer of a legendary-but-now-defunct indie rock group who has come to South Carolina to turn over a new leaf. A bighearted artist and a bit of a wild man, Ran knows that his wife Claire's patience with him hangs by a frayed thread. After a five-month separation, he's come south from New York City to rejoin her and their two young children at Wando Passo, Claire's inherited family estate, determined to save his marriage, his family, and himself.
Back at Wando Passo, though, things don't proceed according to plan. Claire has taken a job teaching at the local music conservatory, where the dean of the faculty, Marcel Jones, is one of Claire's oldest friends. It's unclear -- to Ran, at least -- whether Claire and Marcel's relationship remains platonic or has evolved, in his absence, in a disturbing new direction. Matters are complicated further when Ran discovers a mysterious black pot of apparent slave manufacture buried on the grounds of Wando Passo. The unearthing of this relic transports Ransom -- and the reader -- back one hundred fifty years into the story of another love triangle at Wando Passo at the height of the Civil War . . .
. . . May 1861. Claire's great-great-great grand-mother, Adelaide DeLay, a beautiful thirty-three-year-old "spinster" from a top-drawer Charleston family, arrives at Wando Passo by boat, having made a marriage of convenience to the plantation's future master, Harlan DeLay. As Addie comes down the gangway, she catches the eye of the plantation's steward, Jarry, Harlan's black half brother. Trans-fixed, she sees something in Jarry's eyes "like a question that, once posed, you cannot rest until you have the answer to." 
In the present, when two eroded skeletons turn up buried in shallow graves, Ransom becomes obsessed with the identities of the bodies and what happened to them. Did the past triangle -- involving Addie, Harlan, and Jarry -- culminate in murder? As his marriage to Claire continues to unravel, Ran begins to wonder whether disturbing echoes of the past are leading him, Marcel, and Claire toward a similar, tragic outcome in the present.
A fast-paced adventure story filled with lyrical writing, wicked humor, and unforgettable characters, Back to Wando Passo propels the two love stories, linked by place through time, to a simultaneous crescendo of betrayal, revenge, and redemption, and asks whether the present is doomed to ceaselessly repeat the past -- or if it can sometimes change and redeem it.

Back to Wando Passo: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

PAYNE, David

United States

William Morrow

Hailed as "the most gifted American novelist of his generation" (Boston Globe), David Payne introduces us to Ransom Hill, a big-hearted, wild-man lead singer of a legendary indie rock group, who has come to South Carolina determined to save his marriage, his family, and himself. But back at Wando Passo, his wife's inherited family estate, things don't proceed according to plan. There's another man in the picture, and Ran's discovery of a mysterious relic from slave times transports him—and the reader—back into the story of another romantic triangle at Wando Passo that erupted violently at the height of the Civil War. Will the present repeat the past? Filled with fast-paced adventure, lyrical writing, wicked humor, and unforgettable characters, David Payne's Back to Wando Passo propels the two love stories, linked by place through time, to a simultaneous crescendo of betrayal, revenge, and redemption.

William Morrow Paperbacks

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St Martins Pr

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Confessions of a Taoist on Wall St.

Ballantine Books

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 boyhood friend, and Jane McCrae, the girl they both, disastrously, loved. And as he relives one incredible, heartbreaking summer from thirteen years before, he dares to recover what he changed his life to lose . . .

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Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street: A Chinese American Romance

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 officer, he was reared as an orphan by Taoist monks. When he learns that his father may be a wealthy Wall Street entrepreneur, he feels compelled to go to New York. His efforts to reconcile his two lives -- to find the Tao in the Dow -- make a story rich in character, wit, and insight

Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street

Early From The Dance

DOUBLEDAY

In North Carolina in 1954, sweethearts May Tilley and Jimmy Madden, who wed when May gets pregnant, cope with the hardships of parenthood and medical school, as they find life changing them in unexpected and divisive ways. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour.

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 the locals on their views on motherhood and abortion. 30,000 first printing.

Gravesend Light: A Novel

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PAYNE, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by PAYNE, David

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by PAYNE, David. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Back to Wando Passo: A Novel

Back to Wando Passo: A Novel

Ruin Creek

Confessions of a Taoist on Wall St.

Early from the Dance

Early From the Dance

Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street

Early From The Dance

Ruin Creek

Gravesend Light: A Novel