The Drum King

Susan Patrick is a librarian at Ryerson Polytechnical University.

An English professor in her 40s picks up a charming, attractive, younger
Latino man in a park and spends a summer of torrid lovemaking in a
highly charged sexual relationship fueled by lies, suspicion, and a
sense of impending danger. Grace is her own worst enemy in personal
relationships, a woman who believes she will not be hurt by men if she
always keeps an emotional distance and expects the worst from them, and
who delights in psychological torture of the younger sister of whom she
is jealous.

Richelle Kosar sets the scenes with a definite sense of place—Toronto
in the 1990s—and, through flashbacks, to the wealthy at play in
Muskoka in the 1950s. She contrasts this with the impoverished trying to
survive in South America at that time. Into the story she weaves such
universal themes as the affect that a parent can have on a child’s
self-esteem; the sibling relationship and how siblings perceive and
remember family history differently; the destructive power of ambition;
and the mistrust and insecurity that can result from lack of
communication.

The reader is pulled deeper into the story as the affair and the
intrigue intensify and, ultimately, culminate in a surprising, yet
inevitable, conclusion. The Drum King is a gripping story that will
appeal to readers interested in the psychology of relationships.