Back to Wando Passo

May 15, 2006
Payne's richly ornate Southern saga (after Gravesend Light
) follows Ransom Hill, a current New York cabbie and former '80s songwriter-in-demand, back South. Ran is rejoining his estranged wife, Claire DeLay, and their two small children at Wando Passo, the South Carolina rice plantation Claire has inherited. Originally a poor boy from North Carolina, Ran truly loves his Charleston-born, flaky musician wife of 19 years. But the past dogs Ran: Claire, a former concert pianist, finds work teaching music at a local college and reconnects with her childhood friend Marcel Jones, a black musician and sour ex-member of Ran's band. At Wando Passo, he excavates an old pot containing ceremonial objects, and, later, two corpses are unearthed—perhaps solving the mysterious disappearance of the Civil War master of the house, Harlan DeLay, and his Charleston wife, Addie, who soon get alternating diary entry–like chapters. Addie reveals her illicit romance with Harlan's black half-brother, Jarry, the son of a Cuban buja
; their biracial love resonates with Claire's attraction to Marcel, while Ran's loopy purpose seems to be to release the ancestral curse so that the whole family can function again. Despite a rather too-tidy plot, Payne fashions elaborate prose and touching characterization into an absorbing tale.