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 twenty years, it is one of the��most starkly moving parables ever written of the��dark forces that brood over the tortured world of��adolescence.