Shadow of the Bear: Travels in Vanishing Wilderness is a work of narrative nonfiction, which chronicles a personal search for the eight remaining bear species across continents, cultures, and memory.
Payton's book The Ice Passage: A True Story of Ambition, Disaster, and Endurance in the Arctic Wilderness (Doubleday Canada), is a narrative nonfiction account of the final voyage of HMS Investigator.
His latest book, a novel, The Wind is Not a River is set in Alaska during the Japanese invasion of the Aleutian Islands of Attu and Kiska. The New York Times, in a review posted on January 31, 2014, called the book "gripping" and "meditative."[2]