A Separate Peace: by John Knowles During World War II in the struggle for peace among nations comes a smaller, but still significant struggle, in a prep school boy becoming a man and waking up to reality. In the book A Separate Peace, the author John Knowles, creates the image of two sixteen-year old boys struggling to keep what little sense of peace they know, even though there is a war going on all around them. Gene Forrester, the narrator of the story also struggles with an inner conflict of his secret resentment of his best friend Phine ....