It has been twenty years since Knowles' classic A Separate Peace first appeared. Now the author returns to Devon, that same New Hampshire boys' school, for his latest novel, Peace Breaks Out. While World War II provided the background for the Gene and Phineas story, in the new novel the war is over and a Devon graduate, Pete Hallam, returns from the war to teach history at the school. Devon serves as a place for Pete to rest and halt time a bit as he tries to sort out a broken marriage and the horror of the war. What Pete meets at Devon is a new group of teenagers who have been brought up with the war but now seem confused, upset, bewildered, and shortchanged because the war has ended and questions about their future are no longer clear-cut….

As in A Separate Peace, an accidental death occurs, and the elite sports heroes of Devon are enveloped in a cloud of guilt. There's the same kind of follow-the-leader corruption that appears in Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War.

The writing in Peace Breaks Out is superb. The book does not depend on A Separate Peace, but lives on its own. It will take its place alongside the earlier book as a fine novel. (p. 75)