One Summer at Church Camp is an ambitious, genre-blending novel that traces the journey of Samuel Briggs—a resilient, physically disabled young man—and his circle of friends as they navigate a fateful summer at the storied Camp Country. What begins as a familiar coming-of-age church camp experience quickly transforms into a labyrinthine tale of horror, hope, and healing, weaving together elements of slasher, supernatural, psychological, gothic, fantasy, and science fiction, all underpinned by deep explorations of friendship, trauma, and redemption.

Summary

The novel opens with Samuel and his church group arriving at Camp Country, a remote summer retreat steeped in rumor and legend. At first, the summer unfolds with the promise of new beginnings: there are campfire songs, ghost stories, and budding friendships—especially between Samuel, his loyal friend Charles, and the enigmatic Bianca, whose past with Samuel is as tangled as the woods that surround the camp.

Beneath the surface, however, the camp is haunted by stories of the “Cider-Block Butcher,” an escaped mental patient with a history of gruesome violence, and the lost girls whose spirits wander the grounds. The counselors, led by the stern Evelyn Marsh and the troubled Pastor Graham, attempt to maintain order, but a growing sense of unease pervades the air as supernatural occurrences—strange symbols, chilling visions, and whispered voices—begin to intrude on the campers’ reality.

When a series of mysterious disappearances rocks the camp, the boundaries between legend and reality dissolve. Campers and counselors are thrown into a spiral of fear as the slasher elements intensify: a masked figure stalks the grounds in the midst of a violent storm, and one by one, children and adults vanish or are attacked. Samuel, Bianca, and Charles are drawn into a desperate quest to uncover the camp’s secrets, relying on cryptic clues from a decades-old diary and the protective power of a spiral.