Chase Talks About "How to Survive a Summer" Kirkus Style

“I learned the past is not the past, a lump of time you can quarantine and forget about, but a reel of film in your brain that keeps on rolling, spooling and unspooling itself regardless of whether or not you are watching.”

The release of a horror movie based off his summer at a gay conversion camp in southern Mississippi sets Will Dillard on a road trip to confront a time he would rather forget in Nick White’s How to Survive a Summer.

 As a child, he had to come with terms with his sexuality among the influences of his heavily religious father. Will, himself, wants to be right with God. When some relatives appear after his mother’s death, they bring with them the promise of a “pray the gay away” camp called Camp Levi in a place called the Neck, where his mother spent her younger years. Not surprisingly, the camp is no picnic as his aunt, uncle, and two converted camp counselors use unconventional practices to help the campers overcome their homosexuality. Eventually, this leads to the death of one of the campers.

In the present, Will is a grad student in film studies who is unable to make connections with the people in his life as news of a horror movie produced by one of the other campers is about to release. Unable to face the film based off his life, Will travels to face his demons in person. The journey for Will and the readers becomes slow as the promise of a big payoff looms in the distance.

Several interesting factors (the timely topic of conversion therapy, horror movies, southern ways of life, etc.) are all great ingredients, but they never come to together to bake a satisfying cake.