A Separate Peace*

An american classic and great bestseller for over thirty years, a separate peace is timeless in its description of adolescence during a period when the entire country was losing its innocence to world war ii. Nominated as one of america'S best-Loved novels by pbs'S the great american read. Set at a boys' boarding school in new england during the early years of world war ii, a separate peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. What happens between the two friends one summer, like the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.