Gravesend Light

A writer of rare insight, power, & lyricism, David Payne has been called "the most gifted American novelist of his generation" (The Dallas Morning News). Gravesend Light, his fourth novel, is his most moving & accomplished work to date, an affecting family saga, a high-sea adventure of stirring heroism, & a powerful story of love between two people with conflicting political agendas. Joe Madden, an intense young anthropologist, has retreated to his family's summer home on Little Roanoke on North Carolina's Outer Banks, an isolated village whose accents & social traditions date back to the time of Sir Walter Raleigh. He is conducting an ethnographic study on the lives of the fisherfolk, so he signs on to the boat Father's Price, sharing the tough, timeless labors of the sea & entering a complicated, edgy friendship with ex-con Ray Bristow. He also begins a passionate love affair with Day Shaughnessy, a Yale-trained & fiercely feminist Ob/Gyn in residence on Little Roanoke who is increasingly at odds with prevailing local views on motherhood & abortion. Joe finds that his growing respect for the villager's heritage of pride & sacrifice conflicts with Day's strongly voiced convictions--& then two pregnancies render the issues agonizingly concrete. Matters come to a climax during a murderous winter storm at sea, during which the fate of the Father's Price & its crew, Joe Madden included, hang in precarious balance. Gravesend Light is a story of love & heroism & personal redemption--fiction at its finest.Payne, David is the author of 'Gravesend Light' with ISBN 9780385473385 and ISBN 0385473389.