David Payne was born in North Carolina and attended the Phillips Exeter Academy and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is the author of five novels—Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, Early From the Dance, Ruin Creek, Gravesend Light, Back to Wando Passo—and a memoir, Barefoot to Avalon: A Brother's Story, forthcoming from Grove Atlantic in August 2015. Visit his author website at www.davidpaynebooks.com. Linda Barrett Osborne, Washington Post Book World: "[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... Writing this fine evokes a past time, but also a state of boyhood that is timeless."