King Daniel: Gasparilla King of the Pirates

by Susan Wolf Johnson

This dynamic tale revolves around a Tampa blue-blood family, the Westcotts, whose lives are intricately woven into the traditions and mythical lore of the town's evocative holiday, Gasparilla. The story begins on a summer's evening in 1972. While the band plays amid the sizzling heat at the Tampa Yacht Club, pirates from the Krewe of Gaspar and their ladies eagerly await the arrival of their newly crowned king, Daniel Westcott. But to their dismay, Daniel never shows up. By the wee hours of the next morning, the townspeople are scratching their heads as members of the Westcott family deliberate whether or not to call the police. As the saga unfolds, Daniel has disappeared without a trace.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction

344 pages, Hardcover

Published July 21, 2017

About the author

After attending the University of Florida, Susan Wolf Johnson moved with her husband and young family to Tampa. There she followed her passion for writing and returned to college to pursue a degree in creative writing. To complete her undergraduate work, she studied at Yale and Columbia Universities, and the University of South Florida. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Vermont College. In her early writing years, her short stories and reviews appeared in The Mississippi Review, The Florida Review, The Sun, The Dallas Review, New Letters, and The Charlotte Poetry Review. As an adjunct professor, she taught creative writing and composition at the University of South Florida for fifteen years. The inspiration for her first novel, King Daniel, grew from a curiosity about Tampa's evocative holiday, Gasparilla. Think Mardi Gras with its beads, royalty, and a parade of floats. The story is set in Tampa in the 1970's and revolves around a blue-blood family whose lives are intricately woven into the festivities of this evocative holiday. When the novel begins, Daniel Westcott, the newly crowned king of Gasparilla has disappeared without a trace. Mystery abounds as the search for Tampa’s missing pirate king unfolds and dark family secrets are revealed.