Provenance: A Novel

Winner of the 2017 Maryland Writers' Association Annual Book Award for Historical Fiction

Selected for the 2017 Go on Girl Book Club reading list

Finalist for 2016 Phillis Wheatley Award for First Fiction

Southern civility turns savage when Hank Whitaker’s dying words reveal the unimaginable. No one - not his socialite wife, Maggie, or young son, Lance - suspected the successful businessman, husband, and father they loved and thought they knew was a black man passing for white. In 1931, in the segregated South, marriage between whites and blacks is illegal. Maggie, now a criminal, faces jail. When Lance receives death threats to atone for his father’s betrayal, the family flees the US for a new life in Paris.

Still grieving Hank’s death and fearful of their uncertain future as Europe marches toward war, Lance and Maggie mourn the lives they loved but lost. As they struggle to create new identities for themselves, they find friendship and support from a surprising community of artists and American expats on the same journey. In a new city, with new friends, new loves, and exciting possibilities, they start to believe that it might be possible to change everything, even the past.

Spanning continents and decades and set in Paris between the wars and New York in the Golden Age, Provenance is a sweeping historical saga about love, betrayal, tragedy, triumph, passion, privilege, and the universal desire for acceptance.

“A memorable tale of love, loss, and redemption.” (Kirkus Review)