But reputation never stops the young. Hudson had the temerity and the patience to try his hand at writing a novel, and he succeeded. When You Fall is the story of a college student, Jake Crowe. Having also struck out at baseball, his older brother s success avenue, Crowe retreats into fraternity parties and dormitory solitude sullenness. Jake is smitten to distraction.
Second semester is no better than the first.
His father threatens to ship him off to flight school. His patient and encouraging roommate, Will, tries to shake him out of his lethargy. A New Year s sojourn from his Georgia home to Tennessee winds up with him spending a night in the drunk tank. With freshman year a disaster, Jake s father sends him to a tobacco farm to do hard labor for the summer and pulls him out of his small private college and sends him to the University of Georgia. The education Jake gets from earthy people on the farm continues when his roommate turns out to be a wealthy Venezuelan, Rainier, whose family owns a plantation and hotel.