In the uncertain early years of the second world war, two boys collide at a prestigious New England boarding school. Gene is a lonely, introverted intellectual. Phineas is a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete. As they spiral into a fraught, intense friendship, a shocking act of violence will banish the innocence of these boys and their world forever.

An American modern classic and perennial bestseller, A Separate Peace is a harrowing and luminous parable of the dark side of adolescence, and a haunting treatise on the horrors of war.