FIVE WOMEN—Provocateurs and Touchstones

Five Flowers by Mike Gabelman via Flickr

I started out to write a book about a man. By the time I finished my novel, Provenance, it had become the story of five women—distinctly different in age, outlook, and objective—and how they uniquely shaped their lives as they changed the life of one man. Mother, Grandmother, Caretaker, Counselor, Lover—these women became provocateurs and touchstones in the life my primary character, Lance Henry Withers. They also shaped me as a writer as I came to understand the complexity of each character and the role they played in the arc of Lance’s life. Several factors informed the actions of each woman in Provenance—when and where they lived, marital status, social restrictions, age and most importantly, aspirations. These were key in how each woman acted and reacted in a story that surprisingly – even to the author—gave them equal footing with the primary character.

I begin Provenance in the early 20th century and followed my characters through five decades—a period of remarkable change in the lives of the women in the book as well as women in the real world. My character, Charlotte, was born in 1881 with a burning ambition to change her circumstances and, the sobering fact that she needed the complicity of men to make her dreams reality. Maggie, Charlotte’s daughter and Lance’s mother, was the opposite of her mother. She sought dependence—first on her husband and then her son—suffering betrayal and loss that she was not equipped to deal with without a man. Del, who managed the Whitaker household, became a study in wisdom, determination, and dignity during a time and place, the 1930s in the segregated south, when these were attributes not afforded people of color. Belle, was a woman before her time. During the 1930’s to 50’s, she was as sexually and socially unconventional as she was independent, intelligent, and beautiful teaching Lance how to live fully and successfully. And Emma, who embraced the emerging independence of women in the 60s and 70s, taught Lance about true love, and how it thrives when a man and a woman are equals.

Five women—provocateurs and touchstones—who changed a life as they, and the world around them, changed.

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