"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 before...a passion with the power to
destroy.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.