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The Work Itself The novel if a coming-of-age story: tragedy. Written in New England in 1957-1958 and published in 1959. It was John Knowles first novel. The story begins in 1958 but quickly flashes back to 1942. The Devon school is the setting with the theme being codependency’s threat to identity. A Separate Peace takes place at the Devon School, a school in New Hampshire, during the summer session of 1942. The narrator is Gene Forrester, who now in his early thirties, had returned to Devon for the first time in fifteen years. He reflects on how fearful he was in those early days in 1942. He returns to visit the two places he feared the most, a marble staircase in one of the academic buildings and “The Tree”. After visiting these two places, Gene reflects on how much smaller the tree seems now than in his youth.