About Donna Drew Sawyer

Biography

I’ve spent more than two decades advancing the creativity of others – as the former Director of Marketing and Communications for the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum, Vice President of Communications for one of the country’s largest united arts funds and a founding executive director of a performing arts center. I’ve served multiple times as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and for a while, I even did PR for Sesame Street's Big Bird and Elmo.

 

I’ve had some of my own creative fits and starts over the years, but it took until now for all of the remarkable experiences I’ve had, the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met and the things I’ve learned, to come together on paper. They are the genesis of the novel that’s been rattling around in my head and collecting on scraps of paper for years. Without the support of this writing group, the characters, plot and polish would still be a dream instead of my daily reality.

Thanks guys!

 

WHAT MY BOOK IS ABOUT:

 "Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time."
-Thomas Merton

My novel, PROVENANCE, asks, what defines a man? Is it where he comes from, what he does for a living? Is it wealth, social status, family? What if everything known about a man is a lie? Unlike the certainty  of a provenance – the carefully kept record of a work of art’s origin and history – what authenticates a man? In PROVENANCE, rich and powerful art collector, LANCE HENRY WITHERS, has perfected every aspect of his fictitious life. Leaving all he knew and all who knew him behind, he turned an incident of adversity into a lifetime spent acquiring a fortune as a gifted financier and fame, as a world-renowned art collector. For fifty years Withers has dominated the insular world of art and money, certain that no one, not even his son, suspects that this fair-skinned black man commands a world where nobody expects someone like him to be.When MISS DOTTIE LEE DAVIS, who shares Withers’ true provenance, shows up on his doorstep, will she savage his secrets or save his soul?

 

In a story that moves between the present and the past, spanning more than seven decades, PROVENANCE, is a family saga of strivers and survivors and secrets passed from generation to generation. With the vibrant art world as its primary backdrop, Provenance weaves historical fact with fiction to create a dramatic, eye-opening and at times humorous glimpse of what goes on behind the bronze-relief doors of museums and mansions. However, the story belongs to the passion and purpose of the book’s characters and what happens when you share what truly defines you.

 

Fearful that the revelation of his past will dismantle the life that he has sacrificed everything to create, Withers tries to ensure that his true identity remains his secret. As Withers schemes to protect his image, art and money he discovers that some things have more value, like the priceless legacy of belonging to people and a place. To give his son the wealth of belonging that he never had, Withers must reveal as a forgery the life that he so carefully created, and when he does, he becomes someone not even Withers himself could have imagined.

Click here to read first two chapters of Provenance.