Dr. James Pashen, Professor of Southern History at the University of Virginia, was on his way to Miami to make the speech of his career. Having had his book, Poor White Trash, published the year before, this speech at the 1924 convention of the American Historian Association would open doors he could have never imagined ten years earlier. But as he enjoyed breakfast with a colleague, a glance out of the train window changed his life. That one glance began a downward spiral into choices he never thought he would make, and the consequences of losing himself in Miami.Set among the backdrop of 1920s boomtown Miami, Florida, Pashen's quest takes him from the famous Flamingo Hotel to the speakeasies of Miami, from Joe's Stone Crab to the beautiful Vizcaya.