Why a Booktrail?
2000s: Student life can sometimes be murder…
The Secret History
What you need to know before your trail
Richard Papen joins an exclusive group of Classics students at a New England university and looks forward to studying with the exclusive and elusive group. But this is no ordinary set of students nor is this a usual student lifestyle for Richard is soon drawn into a world of drugs, alcohol and violence that he could never have expected. They think that they have found a new way of thinking and living that no one else knows about, a world where the Greek classics and tragedies have a new meaning and significance. However the world they create is dangerous unstable and unpredictable. When one of the students ends up dead, the stakes are higher than ever.
Travel Guide
College life in Vermont seems a bit dangerous if you take this book as your guide. It is a parallel student world however and nowhere near the usual student life style of an American college. This is a world not only surrounded by alcohol and smoking, but drowned in one. Add to that drugs and violence and a keen sense of wanting to prove that you are somehow ‘ different to the rest of them’ and this is a new and dangerous parallel existence.
A bunch of academic types, an exclusive group and a desire to push the boundaries of all that they know. Self absorbed and with a fascination for the Greek Classics, they are keen to use their academic studies and thoughts to set a basis for their lives and beliefs. Their academic world is one of debauchery in every sense of the word, a self belief that everyone is not as privileged as they are. Their world is a claustrophobic one as apart from their openly gay professor, they don’t seem to mix with anyone else. The newcomer to the group, Richard, is from Plano in California so his fish out of water role is set from the start.
Rich college kids with parent to bail them out in a New England university where the darkness slowly creeps over everyone, the mood darkens and the taste of it all turns bitter. An ethereal setting, cloisters and dark corridors reveal dark student secrets that spiral out of control. And the climax? An Ancient Greek religious ceremony which results in the most disturbing lessons of all.
Hampden Vermont is a fictional place but the booktrail introduces you to the overall sense of an American campus in Vermont.
Where Next?
