Gravesend Light: A Novel

Following the publication of Ruin Creek, the Boston Globe wrote glowingly about David Payne, "Payne may not be the most publicized American novelist honing in on 40, but he is certainly the most gifted." His writing is so evocative of the region his characters inhabit that from the first page of Gravesand Light it is easy to be lost in the voices and ways of these people, their "hoi toide" accents and barnacle-encrusted pilings. In this, his fourth novel, two outsiders with conflicting political agendas come to live in an isolated fishing village on North Carolina's Outer Banks. With perfect pitch, Payne captures their uncertainty and joy as thy learn the villagers' distinctive social customs, fall passionately in love, and in a stirring climax, join in the desperate camaraderie of the town during a murderous winter storm.

Joe Madden is an intense young cultural anthropologist from Duke. He is conducting an ethnographic study on the lives of fisher folk, so he signs on to the boat Father's Price, and moves into his family's summer home on Little Roanoke. Soon after, he meets and begins an affair with Day Shaughenssy, the Yale-trained and fiercely feminist OB/GYN in residence at Beach Med. Payne writes with wonderful empathy about Day, creating a woman's voice and her inner conflicts with skill.

"The truth was, I'd never had the discipline in love that came to me so easily in work. It's not that I was weak; I only wanted to find someone to drink Italian roast with me on Sunday mornings and squeeze fresh juice and read the New York Times for, oh, the next forty years or so, someone I could tell the dream I'd had the night before, and shower with, and have fond, unthreatening sex in the middle of the afternoon when there were bills to pay or gardening to do...whose face would light with uncomplicated happiness when I told him I was pregnant, and not be shy of diapers and rising in the night....All I really asked was that he be as smart and strong as me, and that he have a job."

The story alternates between the characters' voices, and as the story progresses, Joe finds that his growing respect for the villagers' heritage of pride and sacrifice conflicts with Day's strongly voiced convictions. Although heated, all their differences are philosophical, until two pregnacies render the issues agonizingly concrete.

But perhaps the most surprising element of Gravesand Light is the edgy friendship between Joe and Ray Bristow—the born-again ex-con who gets Joe his job on the fishing boat. Their relationship raises fascinating questions of class prejudice, homophobia, and intimacy between men.

The fate of the Father's Price, Joe and Day's relationship, the friendship between the two men, and Joe's ability to move past the issues of his childhood all face a perilous future when a sudden storm whips us the sea making it, "white, white like swirled frosting on a cake."

From the beginning of Gravesand Light readers will discover that Payne's complicated characters offer more than just a sweeping high seas adventure or a beach love story. A writer of rare insight and power, he has been called "the most gifted American novelist of his generation," by the Dallas Morning News and "a master stylist," by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Payne offers additional evidence of his extraordinary talent in this new novel that blends a family saga and Southern coastal setting reminiscent of Pat Conroy with the atmosphere and characters of The Perfect Storm.

About the Author:

David Payne is the author of three previous novels: Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, which won the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award; Early from the Dance; and Ruin Creek. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.