A Separate Peace is a story with a deceitfully simple plot. The main character and narrator, Gene Forrester, ‘accidentally’ knocks his friend, Phineas “Finny” out of a tree. Finny breaks his leg, preventing him from competing in sports, one of his great loves. Gene must navigate through the confusion and guilt of the accident while maintaining his friendship with Finny, getting through high school, and deciding whether or not to enlist in the War. There is jealousy, confusion and pain.

The time period Knowles chose, the Second World War, serves not as a backdrop of the story nor leading character, but as a piece of yarn, adroitly woven into the tapestry of the novel. Hinted at in the title, A Separate Peace is about holding onto innocence in a world of tumultuous unpredictability and violence and what it means to preserve that innocence.

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