The Night Drummer is the story of two teenage friends—white, middle-class Peter Ellis, and Otis James, a native boy adopted by an older evangelical Christian couple. Peter and Otis grow up in small town Ontario in the 1970s, and the novel follows them through their high school years when both confront challenges that require them to decide who they are and who they want to be—decisions that will have profound consequences not only for themselves, but for their friends and family.