Back to Wando Passo is not your typical Southern gothic novel. Nor is it a typical historical or mystery novel. Randall Kenan, author of Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, aptly calls it "a mystery story inside a history story." Indeed, the unraveling of a modern life as a result of the events of 150 years ago is particularly Southern. Too much of the Southern psyche is haunted by those events, which remain ready to be unearthed at a moment's notice and rise unbidden to the surface. David Payne has taken this a step further and created a classic novel.
Payne had the lawnmower vision while living in Vermont, a curious place for a Southern vision to bubble up, or maybe not since the mores are so ingrained in those of us who have grown up here. A native North Carolinian, he has returned to his university roots, moving to Hillsborough, North Carolina, just a few miles north of Chapel Hill. His neighbors, all of whom "dabble" a bit in writing include Lee Smith and Hal Crowther, Allen Gurganus, Michael Malone, Annie Dillard, and Doug Marlette. Hillsborough has become quite a center of Southern literary excellence.
Payne had the lawnmower vision while living in Vermont, a curious place for a Southern vision to bubble up, or maybe not since the mores are so ingrained in those of us who have grown up here. A native North Carolinian, he has returned to his university roots, moving to Hillsborough, North Carolina, just a few miles north of Chapel Hill. His neighbors, all of whom "dabble" a bit in writing include Lee Smith and Hal Crowther, Allen Gurganus, Michael Malone, Annie Dillard, and Doug Marlette. Hillsborough has become quite a center of Southern literary excellence.
