The Washington Post writes that “David Payne understands that place most families inhabit—somewhere between love and necessity, between truth and myth, between self and the expectations, the dreams, and ultimately, the separateness of others.” In Ruin Creek David Payne revisits North Carolina ’s windswept Outer Banks, setting of his 1989 novel Early from the Dance, and introduces readers to 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 and endures. Joey bears the burdens of his parents’ increasingly unhappy union. As he struggles to cope with his fractured family life, Joey turns to his grandfather, who explains that “a time may come when a person has to let go of what he loves to save himself.”
          Imbued with Payne’s trademark lyrical prose and psychological acuity, this is a novel “full of life, full of wisdom, full of words that singe, sing and somehow console” (The Boston Globe).

“A master stylist, Payne breathes life into his material, cloaking it in rich, evocative prose and deftly drawing us into his world until, suddenly, we realize that this is our family, these are our own tragic flaws.”
-- Richmond Times-Dispatch

Stories this brilliant are told only by the masters of fiction, a short list to which the name of David Payne now belongs.”
--The Providence Journal


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