Twenty-eight-year-old anthropologist, Joe Madden-- whom readers first met as eleven-year-old Joey in Payne’s 1993 novel, Ruin Creek-- has returned to his family’s summer home on North Carolina's Outer Banks to begin a new ethnographic study.
           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

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