My book is entitled A Separate Peace, written by John Knowles. The copyright date is 1959, and this book contains 196 pages.
The scene takes place in the Devon School, in New Hampshire. It is the summer of 1942 (World War II) and America is at war.
The plot is about a sixteen year old boy, Gene Forrester, the narrator of the book, returns to the Devon School, were he had graduated fifteen years ago. He walks to a tree near a river, and there, he once more becomes a student at the school, sixteen years earlier, in 1942. He has a best friend, called Phineas or Finny, who is an athletic boy, that always brakes the school rules and constantly somehow gets out of the problems he gets into. As best friends, the two boys are always together. Being in the war, Finny is the only boy at Devon that doesn't fear it. They are always jumping from a tree into the river to get the "courage" they need to go to the war, and so the two of them form a club called the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session. Many boys decide to join. One day, on that tree with Gene only, Finny looses his balance and falls off. When he landed, he had broken his leg. This accident will prevent him from ever doing sports again in his life. Gene feels guilty, and thinks he made Phineas fall. Finny, with his shattered leg, goes home. A year later, he comes back. Gene now feels much better because his best friend is back.
Unfortunately, a while after his return, Phineas falls once again, but this time down a flight of stairs and breaks the same leg again but fortunately not as seriously as the first time. He is forced to lie down until the doctor comes. During his operation, Finny passes away. The doctor then calls on Gene to tell him what happened, and he does so. He explains and says that some morrow from the broken leg must have been released into the bloodstream and gone to the heart killing Finny immediately. At the end of the novel, Gene realizes that he is not responsible for Finnys death.