Lately I’ve been revisiting many of the books my mom introduced me to during summer reading when I was growing up, and today I felt like continuing that nostalgia trip. I wanted an audiobook to listen to while resting at home since I’ve been especially tired and symptomatic this week, and on Spotify I found a two-hour recording of the first book that ever emotionally destroyed me as a kid: John Knowles’ classic, A Separate Peace.

Gene is sixteen years old and attending Devon School, a military boarding school for boys in New England during World War II. He’s introverted, studious, and insecure. His roommate is Phineas (nicknamed Finny), a popular athlete with an abundance of charisma. Despite their polar-opposite personalities, Finny considers Gene his best friend. In some ways, Gene returns that sentiment, but he can’t shake the feeling that he’s always in competition with Finny. In every possible way, Finny seems like a threat to him. One day, Finny convinces Gene to jump from a tree into the river below, and everything changes when Gene makes the biggest mistake of his life.

This short novel (around 250 pages) manages to weave together several themes: historical fiction, the transition from boyhood to adulthood, the psychological impact of war, and the complexities of friendship. It was pretty heavy reading for me the first time around as a nine-year-old, but it quickly became one of my favorite books to talk about that year. It left such an impression that when my family got a puppy a few weeks after I finished it, I named him Phineas – Finny for short. Phineas and Ferb premiered that same summer, and everyone at school assumed I had chosen the name because of the show, but my Finny’s name always came from A Separate Peace.

This beautifully written tragedy was one of the first books that truly hooked me on summer reading, and revisiting it as an adult brought back memories of my mom reading it aloud to my brother and me, along with those early days of raising a puppy named after my favorite character. If you enjoy coming-of-age stories, historical fiction, or character-driven tragedies, A Separate Peace remains just as powerful today as it was when I first encountered it. The audiobook also makes for an excellent companion on a summer road trip!