Before I Knew Him

In the hottest summer for years, the long school holidays stretch out before fourteen-year-old Leo. But he doesn’t see much to look forward to. Leo doesn’t fit in. But nothing ever happens to Leo; he never has a story. Then he meets David. Moody, resentful and tough, David is everything Leo is not and an unlikely friendship soon grows between them.

Events that summer take a dangerous and disturbing turn, and the results are devastating for both boys and their friendship. In the aftermath, traumatized, they pledge to keep their shared secret, never to meet again, and above all — to forget. But when the terrible truth re-emerges ten years later and forces David and Leo back together, everything and nothing has changed.

Before I knew him, in the time when he was still a collection of movements and mannerisms I observed from a distance, when he had no history, no future that I could guess, that is the time I’d have back. Then, he was a boy, like me, though nothing like me. Perhaps it was that, the differences which drew me to him. But something else, too, more powerful, like the pull of the tide that sucked sand back to the sea...

Leo Fisch is a young man with a brilliant future ahead of him. He’s about to complete his MBA, and soon to marry the beautiful Kathryn. He is bright, sociable and, outwardly at least, he seems happy. But as the wedding day approaches, Kathryn is troubled by the past he never speaks of, and increasingly disturbed by his reluctance to take her home to meet his family.

But when a shocking discovery devastates Leo’s home town, a figure from childhood is thrust back into his life. David Caldwell is tough and aggressive; the very opposite of the company Leo now keeps. Unlikely friends, they are bound by a shared summer – and a shared secret – they had pledged to forget.

As past and present begin to close in on the comfortable life Leo has created for himself, their terrible truth threatens to re-emerge. David quickly develops a frightening hold over Leo, and it seems that in the ten years since that fateful summer, everything and nothing has changed...

Before I Knew Him is an unforgettable portrait of love at its most powerful and obsessive, and of how it can forever change the course of someone’s life.