Ruin Creek
by David Payne
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"With his first two novels, David Payne earned the rare combination of critical and commercial success, and established himself as one of our most gifted young novelists." "Now, in Ruin Creek, Payne travels deep into the soul of a troubled and unforgettable family and, along the way, establishes his rightful place in the legion of great Southern writers who know that we can neither escape nor recapture the past." "It is 1954 in Killdeer, North Carolina, and May Tilley, a beautiful young show more debutante, decides that she wants "a different life from what Mamma and Daddy had." She finds it, in spades, with Jimmy Madden, a former high school basketball hero with the dangerous combination of good looks, a smooth tongue and big, secret dreams." "Soon May finds herself pregnant, and after some serious soul-searching she and Jimmy decide to get married. But times are tough, as Jimmy enters medical school and struggles with his studies, while May adjusts to the strange new worlds of marriage and motherhood. Day-to-day life gets in the way of the couple's dreams, and they gradually realize that love and passion aren't always enough to preserve a failing marriage. Yet they stay together for more than a decade, and it is their son Joey who suffers the most as he watches his parents drift further apart. As he tries to cope with the devastation of his family life, Joey turns to his grandfather, Pa, for advice on how to move away from his troubled family and into the world of men - how to see his parents as they are, instead of how he desperately wants them to be." "Conscious at every moment of the bonds and burdens of family, David Payne has written Ruin Creek with the mature authority of a writer who knows the human heart in all its fragility and glory. No reader will come away from this novel unmoved."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved show lessTags
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Member Reviews
Of Payne's five books, my favorite so far. Writing from an 11-year-old's POV gave the story an understanding of how a family's demise can affect the children involved. Each chapter can take a reader back to his/her childhood, to remember [their] thoughts and feelings, and to commiserate with young Joey. Payne also allowed an understanding of the parents' viewpoints by switching back & forth with each chapter. This style provided interest and was ultimately successful.
This is a story about the breakdown of a marriage in the 1950s. It's told from three perspectives: Jimmy, the would-be doctor, May, daughter of a wealthy and influential southern family, and Joey, their unplanned 12-year-old son. It's a story about broken dreams and new found realities and how this family deals with them. I give this story an A+! - it was well-written and thought-provoking.
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Author Information
6 Works 753 Members
David Payne is the author of three previous novels: Confessions of a Taoist on Wall Street, which won the prestigious Houghton Mifflin Literary Fellowship Award; Early from the Dance; and Ruin Creek. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and now lives in Wells, Vermont. (Bowker Author Biography)
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 1993
- People/Characters
- Jimmy Madden; May Tilley; Joey Madden; Pa; Reed
- Important places
- USA; North Carolina, USA; Outer Banks, North Carolina, USA
- Epigraph
- I had learned long ago, but had forgotten in my frenzied love, that there is a draught that we must drink or not be fully human...I knew that one must know the truth. I knew quite well that when one is adult one must raise t... (show all)o one's lips the wine of truth, heedless that it is not sweet like milk but draws the mouth with its strength, and celebrate communion with reality, or else walk for ever queer and small like a dwarf. - Rebecca West The Return of the Soldier
"I'm beginning to believe all this I hear, about how young folks learn all the things in order to get married, that we had to get married in order to learn." - William Faulkner Sanctuary - Dedication
- This book is dedicated to the memory of George A Rose, and to my father, for giving me a wilderness.
- First words
- I stumbled on the photographs by accident some years ago, a cache of secret treasure lying underneath a film of dust at the bottom of a drawer.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I had my love for him and each of them - for Nanny and for Reed and Mama and for Daddy, Daddy too - mine for them and theirs for me, and even if love wasn't strong enough to hold our world together, it still made the broken pieces shine.
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Statistics
- Members
- 124
- Popularity
- 262,137
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.90)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 2
