It’s often been said that there are no new stories, just new ways of telling them. If this is the case, perhaps it is but a mirror of life and the bizarre manner in which events repeat themselves. In Back to Wando Passo when incidents from the past reoccur, the question is whether it’s due to coincidence or some other corporeal force.

Ransom Hill, a down and out, middle-aged, lead singer of a has-been rock and roll band, is reunited with his family after months apart. His wife Claire and their two children fled from him and his aberrant behavior, seeking solace at Wando Passo, to an estate in South Carolina that Claire recently inherited. Back in each other’s company, their marriage and its viability are still in doubt.

When Ransom makes a strange discovery in the backyard of the estate, the story is launched back in time to the days of the Civil War and the people who inhabited the property during that period. Adelaide DeLay, in her early thirties and considered past her prime and virtually unwedable, has just married Harlan DeLay, son of the dying owner of Wando Passo. The plantation is typical for such a place in the south at the start of the war; it is the home to the owner’s family and the hundreds of slaves that are owned. Not typical are the atypical relationships between the family and the slaves; their lives are intertwined on many levels including more than one love triangle. Addie is shocked at what she finds but is quickly swept up in the turmoil, becoming an intrinsic part of it as well. The two stories, the present and the past, run on two parallel lines, like two trains on side by side tracks, heedlessly hurtling themselves toward the same disastrous intersection.

Author David Payne’s use of language, his mastery of it, is tangible on each and every page; the imposing imagery, the smooth flowing dialogue and the descriptive and vivid settings are the irrefutable evidence. His insights into the human condition are brilliant, including those of his own gender, and he is unafraid to reveal them:

“(Men) expect women to love them like their mamas did—or didn’t—then test that love with outrageous behavior till they succeed in driving it away; when they have, they then set out to wreak vengeance on their ‘betrayal’—isn’t that the way of it?”

The story itself, a historical paranormal with a literary tone, is intriguing yet not overly impressive. The supposition that major problems can occur when people love those of another race, regardless of the time setting, is plausible; that all of the major characters should love others of a different race is not. The tale moves along on a somewhat predictable plot line. There is a slight twist at the end but it appears almost too contrived, as if the author saw his own predictability and hoped to disguise it at the last minute.

Donna Russo Morin
© June 2006