Winner of the Madville Publishing 2021 Blue Moon Novel Award, Judged by Clay Reynolds

“If you’ve ever suffered a loss, if you’ve ever had to start over, you will find kinship and hope and even joy in Provenance, the story of a widower seeking to salvage his life after moving back to his small hometown in upstate New York. I cannot recall reading a debut novel imbued with such depth of understanding and compassion for its characters, or one that better captures the messy business of living. Sue Mell writes like a dream.”—Will Allison, author of the novels What You Have Left and Long Drive Home

Provenance is a beautifully supple book about the power of renewal and the everyday, small redemptions hiding within families. Sue Mell artfully captures the hold of the past in all its intoxicating, tumbledown glory and sings it to life in the present.—Dominic Smith, author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

“In Sue Mell’s Provenance, an adult brother and sister navigate a tricky relationship that tests the limits of interdependence. They exemplify what Alfred Hayes said, that what one ran out of was not mistakes, but the years to make them in. This novel taps into the characters’ reserves of motivation and strength in service of what we all want: another chance, and what might still be possible when our best efforts fall short.”—Amy Hempel, award-winning author of Sing to It and The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel