Can You Ever Escape Your Past? — Julia Ibbotson

Drumbeats is the first novel in a trilogy. It is 1965 and the air is light with the idea of freedom, love and the Beatles, but eighteen year old Jess is feeling stifled by her puritanical religious family background in working class England, her mother's narrow-minded Rulebook and rigid plans for her life, and her silent, strangely disturbing father. A feisty young woman with ideas of her own, she plans to defer her university study and instead escape her past to flee to Ghana, West Africa, for a gap year, teaching and nursing in the bush, much to the horror of her parents. In the 60s, Africa means darkness and danger to most people, not least her Quaker family, but to Jess it conjures up a picture of exotic adventure and freedom. Little does she realise what this year will, in fact, bring: joys, horrors, love and tragedy. She must find her way on her own and learn what fate has in store for her, as she becomes embroiled in the poverty and turmoil of the small war-torn African nation under a controversial dictatorship. Jess must face the dangers of both civil war and unexpected romance. But can she escape her troubled past? And why do the drumbeats haunt her dreams?