This is a story that takes place in 1954 in Killdeer, North Carolina and is told from three differents viewpoints. May Tilley, James Madden, and their son Joey Madden.
As a beautiful young debutante, May Tilley wants a better relationship from what her Mamma and Daddy had. She falls in love with the good-looking Jimmy Madden, a former high school basketball hero who has a gift of gab and unfulfilled dreams. Soon May gets pregnant and she and Jimmy decide to get married. Jimmy enters medical school and is made to quit; he fails after the first year because his heart is in becoming a writer. Jimmy thinks that he does what he does because his cold father, his verbally abusive mother, and his wife May expect him to. Problems strike the couple, love and passion ebb, and their marriage becomes a failing one, although they stay within the marriage.
As resentment builds on both sides over the years, Jimmy loses the wish to better himself. Meanwhile May grows prouder of her heritage and hurtful toward Jimmy whose path leads him to philandering and booze. Their children, Joey and his brother Reed, suffer a lot. Joey becomes close to his grandfather, Pa, an old-fashioned tobacco wholesaler, who we find to be one of the central characters through other characters' accounts.

people who enjoy psychological fiction especially the kind that deals with the complexities of family life.

The usage of three different voices, truly separable from each other with their diction, feelings, and special way of thinking. It was as if three really different people were talking.

look up David Payne and see if he has another book I could read.

sad and feel empathy for all the characters in the story, except Jimmy's mother.

David Payne grew up in Henderson NC and was educated at the Phillips Exeter Academy and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he graduated with highest honors in 1977. His first novel, Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, was published in 1984 and won the Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award. His subsequent three novels — Early from the Dance ( 1989), Ruin Creek (1993) and Gravesend Light (2000) — are all set in the fictional town of Killdeer --based on Henderson, N.C., and on the Outer Banks. After years in Manhattan and in southwestern Vermont, where he taught at Bennington College, Payne now resides with his family in Hillsborough, N.C. Besides Ruin Creek, his books are Songs for the Old Century and Gravesend Light.
David Payne has understood the fragility and also the splendor of the human heart. He has a unique voice as a storyteller and poignancy in his way of presenting his characters.

I couldn't let it go once I started it. The characters are very well-drawn. The story is enticing. And the setting, the beaches at the Outer Banks of California, is fantastic.

David Payne has written an insightful book all around and his Joey is stunning. Joey's character, as the suffering older child, is masterfully presented, especially when he starts to learn how to see his parents as they are instead of how he desires them to be, and turns to his grandfather for advice on how to move away from his troubled parents.

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Created Sep 06, 2003 at 5:48pm • Submit your own review...