He can't seem to shake the memory. From the top floor of his office building, he stands in the window and looks out over his domain, one of the cities that never sleeps in the north. His mind is drawn to a simple uncluttered encounter. It was just a brief moment, a second or two at most, but the scene has stuck in his mind for over 15 years. 

Miles away in a much smaller town filled with muddy dirt roads, on the outskirts of a place called the "Shanty Town", Mrs. Craft remembers a person she happened to meet purely by accident at the train station's taxi turnabout. She didn't befriend the man and barely said thank you as he held the taxi door for her to take possession. But as he held the door, there was an undeniable sensation that he'd see her again. He was leaving town; she was trapped in it. 

The image of the young lady has haunted the man in the window hundreds of miles away in a world unfamiliar with "The Shanties", its collection of shacks, and one of its inhabitants. Caught in a web of deceit, the man who's fallen for the woman in the city must follow the family traditions. His inheritance is controlled by the matriarch who holds the purse strings to a historic Southern family. The family has survived many trials and tribulations and it will survive another. 

The social circles are ablaze with the antics of at least one of the Farrington men, but only one holds the secret to their questionable future. For Sophia, who has remade her world after being expelled from the only world she'd ever known, lives with her girls in a place named Shanty Town. 

Under the majestic sprawling oak trees, often called the umbrellas, a tale is spun that will invite the listener into a world that lacks luster, a dismal life brought on by the swipe of a pen. Dan R. Fowler's first romance novel spins a tale of a hopeless dreamer imprisoned under the umbrellas of Alabama.