Main characters: Richard, teacher and writer; Danny, a tough boy exploding through puberty inclined to challenge all authority; Hansa, a gentler reserved boy desperately seeking parental and other kinds of love. These three and others get to know each other in a small private boarding school in the Scottish Highlands, where the teacher & writer confronts his attraction to boys, and the boys discover in him a protector, champion, and, sometimes, a lover.

The book's author, Daniel Mallery, knows the Highlands--knows its speech patterns, and especially he knows its disadvantaged boys: their pretenses and defences, and their contradictory yearnings for acceptance, stability, and freedom. In STRANGE CATHARSIS, he has narrated a tale of one man and a handful of wonderfully individualized boys growing up.