Early From the Dance - by David Payne (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Adam Jenrette, thirty-one and a successful Manhattan artist, has been hiding from his past for too long. When a relative's death calls him back to North Carolina, he is pulled into an intense encounter with his own eighteen-year-old self and the two most important people in his life-- Cary Kinlaw, his best boyhood friend, and Jane McCrae, the girl they both, disastrously, loved. And as he relives one incredible, heartbreaking summer from thirteen years before, he dares to recover what he changed his life to lose...

A Southern novel in the grand tradition, Early from the Dance is a spellbinding story, beautifully told, about characters who fix themselves indeliably in our memory and the kind of passion that transforms lives.

Review Quotes

"Brilliant... a defining voice for his generation... Reading stretches of "Early From the Dance" is like attending a play in which every line is a curtain line. Payne has the deepest human sympathy for his characters and knowledge of the heart; everyone in this book comes alive... David Payne may not be the most publicized American novelist homing in on 40, but he is certainly the most gifted." --The Boston Globe

"I begin with what may seem a bold observation: David Payne is the most gifted American novelist of his generation... in "Early from the Dance," he sets his literary table on the Carolina Outer Banks, a literary territory as palpable in these pages as Tobacco Road in Erskine Caldwell's works or the Salinas Valley in John Steinbeck's." -- The Dallas Morning News

"[David Payne] writes of a people and a place from deep in his heart. Mr. Payne knows the hopes, fears and habits of his characters, and weaves a powerful, lyrical story for them that is a joy to read." --The New York Times Book Review

"choreographed with sinewy definition and split-second timing... David Payne is in top form, and it's some of the strongest, most demanding writing to be found in American fiction today." --The Los Angeles Times

"Payne's new novel captures the desperation of being 18, confused and wildly in love, and it will remind readers of the poignance and amazing grace of second chances..." --Raleigh News & Observer

"A symphony of a novel... Payne keeps us mesmerized." --Newsday