A Separate Peace by John Knowles

Set at a boys' boarding school in New England during the early years of World War II, this novel 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 the war itself, banishes the innocence of these boys and their world.