How to Survive a Summer

A searing debut novel centering around a gay-to-straight conversion camp in Mississippi and a man's reckoning with the trauma he faced there as a teen.

Grad student Will Dillard has largely buried memories of the summer he spent at a camp intended to "cure" homosexuality. But when he finds out a horror movie based on the camp is hitting theaters, he's forced to face his past—and his role in another camper's death.

As he recounts the events surrounding his "failed rehabilitation," Will strikes out on an impromptu road trip back home to Mississippi, eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer. With a masterful confluence of sensibility and place, How to Survive a Summer introduces an exciting new literary voice from the American South.