The Marlboro Man

McClellanville, South Carolina. 1985.

The trailer park on the edge of town is full of people trying not to drown in their own pasts.

Twenty-one-year-old Cynthia Marie never imagined she would end up there. After her wealthy parents slammed the door on her for good, the rundown trailer became a temporary place to land while she worked long shifts at Bobby's Diner, attended community college, and tried to figure out what to do with the life she had been thrown out of.

A few trailers down lives Danny Edward.

Older. Quiet. Reserved in the way only lonely men can be. A Vietnam veteran with cigarette-stained fingers and grease beneath his nails, Danny spends his days working as a mechanic and his evenings sitting on his porch with a Marlboro in one hand and the local newspaper in the other while the heavy summer heat settles over the park. On weekends, he tends to the small garden outside his trailer, drinks beer with old friends, and tries to keep the memories quiet.

She is twenty-one and restless.

He is thirty-five and tired.

At first, Cynthia only notices him in passing while walking her dog through the trailer park each evening. But curiosity has a way of growing in the South's long summer nights, and before long, the quiet mechanic with the black Chevy pickup begins slipping into her thoughts more than he should.

In a town where everybody watches and nobody forgets, two lonely people find themselves pulled toward something neither of them expected.