What It Was Like

It s really a very simple story. What happened was this: I met this girl and did a very stupid thing. I fell in love. Hard. I know that to some people that makes me an idiot and a loser. What can I say? They re right. I did some extremely foolish things; I m the first to say it. And they ve left me in jail and alone.

So begins one of the most compelling, emotionally charged, and affecting novels you are likely to read this year.

It is the summer of 1968 and a young man takes a job at a camp in upstate New York before starting his first semester at Columbia University. There, he meets Rachel Price, a fellow counselor who is as beautiful as she is haunted. Their romance will burn with a passion neither of them has ever known beforea passion with the power to destroy.

In the tradition of "Endless Love" and "Gone Girl," "What it was Like" is an intimate, raw, and revealing journey through the landscape of all-consuming love. It announces the debut of a remarkable storyteller."