[In "Peace Breaks Out"] Pete Hallam—class of '37—returning to the Devon School in New Hampshire in the fall of 1945 as a teacher, hopes to recover there from wartime traumas. But the boys in the class of '46 are an edgy bunch, frustrated and guilty because they won't be graduating from the prep school to the armed forces like the classes before them. There's a simmering air of violence among them during the long winter as Pete in his low-keyed way tries to help them cross the threshold to adulthood. The students include the familiar types … but Knowles makes each one a unique and vulnerable character. This may not be the virtuoso performance that "A Separate Peace" was, but it's a sympathetic and nostalgic recreating of a vanished academic oasis.

A review of "Peace Breaks Out," in Publishers Weekly (reprinted from the February 6, 1981 issue of Publishers Weekly...