How to Survive a Summer. A Novel

**Named One of Book Riot's BEST QUEER BOOKS OF 2017**"Packed with story and drama . If Tennessee Williams's 'Suddenly Last Summer' could be transposed to the 21st-century South, where queer liberation co-exists alongside the stubborn remains of fire and brimstone, it might read something like this juicy, moving hot mess of a novel." -Tim Murphy, The Washington Post 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.
Camp Levi, nestled in the Mississippi countryside, is designed to "cure" young teenage boys of their budding homosexuality. Will Dillard, a midwestern graduate student, spent a summer at the camp as a teenager, and has since tried to erase the experience from his mind. But when a fellow student alerts him that a slasher movie based on the camp is being released, he is forced to confront his troubled history and possible culpability in the death of a fellow camper.
As past and present are woven together, Will recounts his "rehabilitation, " eventually returning to the abandoned campgrounds to solve the mysteries of that pivotal summer, and to reclaim his story from those who have stolen it. With a masterful confluence of sensibility and place, How to Survive a Summer is a searing, unforgettable novel that introduces an exciting new literary voice."Clear and moving, revealing White's talent in evoking the complexities of the rural South."-Publishers Weekly