My story begins, as many stories do, beside a road that our characters have chosen to travel. For them the road they have chosen will lead to destinations that only destiny could have charted. Little did the travelers know that this spot would mark the beginning of their journey and they knew even less about hoe life's fickle twists and turns had brought them here. Life is that way and the kaleidoscope within which it is contained may twist and turn in infinite directions which offer the participants a cacophony of confusing colors and patterns to choose from. Often it nwill be the most tempting and beguiling of patterns that will confuse us and lead us astray. Often destiny does not offer us much of a choice and leaves us with the luck of the draw. The author, Gregory Hugh Brown, is the grandson of the book's central character, Clover McKinley Palmer. The artist's brother, James Roger Brown, did over thirty years of ancestral research which provided the inspiration for the stories and legends within "Fields of Clover".The author and his brother are both MFA graduates of The School Of The Art Institute Of Chicago. Sadly, his brother, an internationally acclaimed artist, passed away in 1997. shortly after finishing his ancestral work entitled "Autobiography in the Shape of Alabama II", This ancestral work fully documented and paid homage to our grandfather and his mother, Mary Dizenia Palmer. It is my intention with "Fields of Clover" to honor these ancestors as well as my brother who did so much to make this book a reality.