The Charlottesville Diaries: Love, Literature and Life at UVA: 1976-81

Chris Merton began college at the University of Virginia in the late 1970s with typical concerns: earn good grades, find the right girlfriend, and join a fraternity. But Chris’s real dream is to become a great writer-a goal that commits him to recording his entire life as truthfully as possible.

The Independent Book Review calls the Charlottesville Diaries a thought-provoking glimpse into a young writer’s romances on a 1970s college campus … Here’s an unfiltered look at a young man’s social life at university in the late ‘70s that leaves us clawing to understand the man he would grow to become. Merton gives readers the intimate gift of his private being in The Charlottesville Diaries, a chance to witness this young man actively expanding and shaping his worldview on his own terms.

This compelling coming-of-age memoir puts readers on campus in the most tumultuous years of a young person’s life. The Charlottesville Diaries is about who we are…and more importantly, who we want to be.