The Indian Drum

A storm beats against Lake Michigan as the legendary Indian drum begins to sound its death knell, heralding mysteries that have lain buried for decades. Benjamin Corvet, a haunted ship owner whose vitality has seeped away alongside the lives lost on waters he once commanded, sits isolated in his Great Lakes estate, a man carved hollow by grief and the unexplained departure of his wife. When Alan Conrad, a young man with questions about his own lineage, receives a summons from Corvet, he journeys toward Chicago and toward truths that will reframe everything he believed about himself. The novel weaves together Indian folklore and psychological suspense as it asks: what debts do we inherit from those who came before us, and can the past ever truly stay buried? MacHarg constructs a moody, atmospheric meditation on identity and legacy, where the supernatural drum serves as both literal omen and metaphor for the heartbeat of history that refuses to stop beating. This is early 20th-century Gothic fiction at its finest: restrained, eerie, and deeply concerned with what we carry forward from the lives and deaths of those who shaped us.