Payne, Johnny

The romantic and naturalistic schools of literature have long been pitted against each other by talented theorists best on divorcing freedom (romantic) from determinism (naturalistic) and using literature to promote the extreme they decide is either morally good (freedom) or effectively caused (determinism). In Negligence in the Garden, the characters are faced with deciding if they are free to determine the courses of their lives, or if their lives are set in motion by endless chains of cause and effect. Their world is the place where romanticism meets naturalism. They discover that through acting free, they can become free, but that the importance of understanding where they might stand in relation to any string of cause and effect is also of the utmost importance in determining how to use their freedoms.

A young woman who filters life through fairy tales runs away from home and discovers the characters of the real world. Beyond exploring the nature of normalcy through her fey perspective, the story is about innocence becoming conscious of good and evil. Her journey take her from the black and white land of fairy tales into the real world where good comes from unlikely characters, and where evil is more subtle and shocking than a wicked witch.

Crossing The Rainbow Bridge is a novel set in 1971, Key West, Florida. The novel is told in two narrative forms, using the viewpoints of the two main characters. The first of which is told through a third person narrative familiar to the novel's female protagonist, Sara Bailey. The second viewpoint is that of the protagonist's mother, told in first person narrative in the novel's final chapter. The impetus of the novel's focus begins with the sudden and accidental death of the protagonist's mother. Initially, the mother's character is revealed mainly through retrospective narrative in the form of the protagonist's dreams. As the novel progresses, the narrative relies on the present moment consciousness of the protagonist. That is, following a traditional coming of age story, as the protagonist learns to cope with the death of her mother, the language of the novel relies more heavily on her voice, and less on the third person retrospective narrative to tell the story.

At the beginning of this novel, Tim, a computer programmer in his early twenties living near Chicago, leaves his girlfriend Gina and the mechanical life he's been living with her and, following the model of the adult bildungsroman hero, begins a search not for his destiny but for the sort of life that will make him happy, in the process becoming less of an overgrown adolescent and more like a grown-up.

In Psalms of Serphius, through the character of Kaylan, we take a journey to see where and how one crosses the line from hero to villain. Is it simply a matter of perspective? History written by the winner? Perhaps the one difference between hero and villain is that in most cases, the villain follows the means justifies the end philosophy, while the hero will usually manage to find a way to satisfy the end without sacrificing his integrity. Maybe this is the distinction between the hero and the anti-hero. In Psalms, Kaylan certainly starts out with all the qualities and opportunities to be a hero, but by the end of the novel, he is most definitely an anti-hero, and on his way to becoming a villain.

Thatch Loop is a novel written in the modernist tradition of experimentation with form and point of view. The novel allows multiple points of view. This allows the reader the chance to view multiple realities as well as know the inner life and motives of each character. Also, this experimentation with point of view creates psychic space in what could otherwise be a cloistered and claustrophobic environment. The story ultimately belongs to Rachel Collier. Her character develops during three summers in the mid 1980s when she is visiting her grandparents. Her visits end abruptly during the summer of 1986, her grandmother dies, and her parents forbid her return to Thatch. These scenes are intermingled with a time period of a few days in 1991 when she and her father, Emerson, return to Thatch for a funeral. Rachel also seeks to reestablish a relationship with her childhood summertime sweetheart.