ARTICLES & INTERVIEWS WITH DONNA SUMMER

DONNA SUMMER'S BOOK TAKES HIGH ROAD By LIZ SMITH (from THE LOS ANGELES TIMES Website, November 7, 2003)

NEW YORK — "Through the mist of dawn, I could see the thunder in his eyes, and he could feel the lightning in mine. In that moment, I knew him completely."  That's Donna Summer writing about a significant emotional and physical moment with her first big love in her new memoir, "Ordinary Girl." She describes the intimacy no further.  This mix of spiritual melodrama and prim discretion marks all of Summer's life story, written with the help of Marc Eliot.  Although Summer has had an extraordinary career and a life that has taken her all over the world and professes to believe in angels and divine intervention, this woman with the voice of an angel is very much what her title boasts — an ordinary girl. Beset with insecurities and suffering a failed marriage, an abusive relationship, the vagaries of career and a hyped-up sexual image that did not accurately reflect her beliefs, Summer emerges as a likable, down-to-earth woman who has placed God and her family — three daughters and a husband of 23 years — above her profession.  There are no blockbuster revelations, no thinly veiled attempts to "get back" at anybody. Summer is something less — and much more — than you might have imagined. Originally printed on The LA Times website