The author, Gregory Hugh Brown, is the grandson of the books central character, Clover McKinley Palmer. The artists 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 withFields of Clover to honor these ancestors as well as my brother who did so much to make this book a reality.