Peggy Payne

An artist is overwhelmed by a spiritual and physical experience that initially turns her life upside down, plunging her into compulsions, obsessions, unmentionable attractions. She has to find out what has overcome her and learn how to deal with power she'd never imagined. The story is set in the resort town of Pinehurst, NC, and in New Orleans.

Her novel, Sister India, was published in 2002. It tells the story of a morbidly obese American woman living in India who is hiding from the life she tried to escape in North Carolina. The book is the story of her courageous emergence.

Sister India was on The New York Times list of notable books of 2001.[4]

Published in 1988, Revelation is the story of calm and collected minister, Swain Hammond, in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. One day while grilling food in his backyard he hears God speaking to him. Neither he nor most of his congregation believe in a god who does such a thing, however. Hammond therefore faces the difficult decision of whether to risk his livelihood by going public about the ordeal or keep secret the very thing his career is supposedly devoted to teaching.

The Healing Power of Doing Good: The Health and Spiritual Benefits of Helping Others was Payne's second book, written with Allan Luks and published in 1991. In it she argues, based on scientific evidence, that helping others mitigates both the intensity and the awareness of physical pain, reduces chronic hostility, and decreases the constriction within the lungs that leads to asthma attacks. She and Luks also make famous the term "helper's high," which describes a feeling of exhilaration and a burst of energy similar to that experienced after intense exercise, followed by a period of calmness and serenity.

This can be corroborated by the Mother Teresa effect, in which researchers showed 132 Harvard students a film about Mother Teresa's work among Calcutta's poor people. The scientists then measured the level of immunoglobin A, the body's first defense against the common cold, present in their saliva. The test revealed markedly increased levels of immunoglobin A, all after simply witnessing somebody else involved in charity work.[5]

Doncaster: A Legacy of Personal Style was Payne's third book and was published in 1997.[6] It depicts a women's clothing company that is built on helping every person, be it employee or customer, develop their individual style and meet their personal goals.

Payne said of her own philosophy while writing for the company:

I found as I began work on this project, sponsored by the clothing company, that what might have been for me a routine copy-writing job instead became an important piece of my life's work. As an outsider to the company, I realized early in the process of the research that this organization was serious—and enthusiastic—about encouraging development of individual potential. This was a philosophy close to my own heart, an idea that I too want to promote. So writing for Doncaster helped me to get out a piece of my own message. Thus, I became an example of the company's hiring philosophy: to find people who can meet the company's needs through fulfilling their own individual dreams.[7]