Set in a boys boarding school in early years of Worl 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 war itself, banishes the innocence of these two boys ad their world. Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends up being as deep and as big as evil itself.