A child is wounded, a teenage girl goes missing…
Randolph Splitter’s new novel, The Ramadan Drummer, a literary mystery about clashing values and the search for connection in a multicultural world, has just been published by Pandamoon Publishing.
About Randolph Splitter
Splitter graduated from Hamilton College, earned a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, taught for many years at Caltech and De Anza College, and edited the literary magazine Red Wheelbarrow. He is the author of two previous books, Body and Soul (fiction) and a psychoanalytic study of Marcel Proust. He’s published over a dozen stories, including a short short in Akashic Books’ Mondays Are Murder series and three stories adapted from Ramadan Drummer. He’s also written prize-winning screenplays and made short films.
He currently lives with his wife in Portland, Oregon.
About the book
The drummer of the title wakes the faithful during Ramadan in the predominantly M
uslim neighborhood of Little Mecca so that they can have some food before beginning their daily fast. But in this culturally diverse American city he awakens believers and nonbelievers alike.
As anti-Muslim activists picket a community fair, shots ring out and a child is gravely wounded. Police detective Ezra Kaufman—who is dealing with the loss of his wife and seeking some kind of spiritual s
olace from his Jewish tradition—is assigned to investigate. In the course of his investigation he meets reporter Aisha Hassan, an observant though liberal-minded Muslim who is covering the same story.
At a party, the young daughter of a prominent Muslim family initiates a sexual encounter with an older teenage boy. Somebody posts photos of the incident on Facebook, and the girl disappears. Both Ezra and Aisha get involved.
A poetry-writing taxi driver has personal and financial issues. When self-appointed moral arbiters find a suspicious magazine in his glove compartment, he faces even more trouble.
Confronting misogyny, homophobia, and the tyranny of teenage cliques, rejecting both fundamentalism and intolerance, Ezra, Aisha, and the others learn that they must chart their own paths toward spiritual meaning and personal connection.
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