Gene was a lonely, introverted intellectual.  Phineas was a handsome, taunting, daredevil athlete.  What happened between them at school one summer  during the early years of World War II is the  subject of A Separate Peace. A  great bestseller for over thirty years--one of the  most starkly moving parables ever written of the  dark forces that brood over the tortured world of  adolescence.