The Miseducation of Cameron Post

by Emily M. Danforth

Overview

The acclaimed book behind the 2018 Sundance Grand Jury Prize-winning movie

"LGBTQ cinema is out in force at Sundance Film Festival," proclaimed USA Today. "The acerbic coming-of-age movie is adapted from Emily M. Danforth's novel, and stars Chloë Grace Moretz as a lesbian teen who is sent to a gay conversion therapy center after she gets caught having sex with her friend on prom night."

The Miseducation of Cameron Post is a stunning and provocative literary debut that was named to numerous best of the year lists.

When Cameron Post’s parents die suddenly in a car crash, her shocking first thought is relief. Relief they’ll never know that, hours earlier, she had been kissing a girl.

But that relief doesn’t last, and Cam is forced to move in with her conservative aunt Ruth and her well-intentioned but hopelessly old-fashioned grandmother. She knows that from this point on, her life will forever be different. Survival in Miles City, Montana, means blending in and leaving well enough alone, and Cam becomes an expert at both.

Then Coley Talor moves to town. Beautiful, pickup-driving Coley is a perfect cowgirl with the perfect boyfriend to match. She and Cam forge an unexpected and intense friendship, one that seems to leave room for something more to emerge. But just as that starts to seem like a real possibility, Aunt Ruth takes drastic action to “fix” her niece, bringing Cam face-to-face with the cost of denying her true self—even if she’s not quite sure who that is.

Don't miss this raw and powerful own voices debut, the basis for the award-winning film starring Chloë Grace Moretz.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062101969
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	02/07/2012
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	372,006
File size:	3 MB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

emily m. danforth is the author of the highly acclaimed young adult novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She lives with her wife and two terrible dogs in Rhode Island. Plain Bad Heroines is her first adult novel.

Editorial Reviews

Gr 10 Up—When 12-year-old Cam learns that her parents have died in a car accident, her first reaction is relief that they will never know that just hours before she was kissing her best friend, Irene. Shortly after the funeral, her conservative aunt moves to Miles City, MN, to help Cam's grandmother with the caregiving, but all the churchgoing and discipline they can marshal throughout Cam's teen years can't prevent her from exploring her sexuality further, finally falling for Coley Taylor, a "straight" girl who wants to experiment. When they eventually get caught, Coley tells all, blaming everything on Cam, and Aunt Ruth sends her niece off to God's Promise, a conversion therapy school and camp. It is here that Cam meets gay teens like herself, and she begins to deal with the guilt and trauma of her adolescence, not through the pious teachings of the camp but through the love of her friends. This finely crafted, sophisticated coming-of-age debut novel is multilayered, finessing such issues as loss, first love, and friendship. An excellent read for both teens and adults.—Betty S. Evans, Missouri State University, Springfield

School Library Journal

In Danforth’s impressive debut, a teenage girl processes her sexual awakening as a lesbian against the backdrop of her parents’ sudden death in a car accident. Cam’s reckoning with her sexuality develops through a series of vignette-like early chapters that focus on the girls that come and go in Cam’s life—and there are several of them—creating narrative moments that will have teens rereading the sexy bits like an earlier generation did with Judy Blume’s Forever. The story is riveting, beautiful, and full of the kind of detail that brings to life a place (rural Montana), a time (the early 1990s), and a questioning teenage girl. Halfway through, the novel makes an abrupt turn when Cam’s secret is revealed, and her evangelical Aunt Ruth sends her off to God’s Promise, a residential school designed to help teens “break free from... sexual sin and confusion by welcoming Jesus Christ into their lives.” Danforth’s story gains even more complexity and dimension from this shift, further developing the political, religious, and coming-of-age themes introduced in the first half. Ages 14–up. Agent: Jessica Regel, Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. (Feb.) ¦

Publishers Weekly

★ “Rich with detail and emotion, a sophisticated read for teens and adults alike.” — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

★ “[An] ambitious literary novel, a multidimensional coming-of-age.” — Booklist (starred review)

★ “The story is riveting, beautiful, and full of the kind of detail that brings to life a place (rural Montana), a time (the early 1990s), and a questioning teenage girl.” — Publishers Weekly (starred review)

★ “This finely crafted, sophisticated coming-of-age debut novel is multilayered, finessing such issues as loss, first love, and friendship. An excellent read for both teens and adults.” — School Library Journal (starred review)

“Cameron is a memorable heroine with an unforgettable and important story to tell, and she does so with wit, emotion, and depth.” — Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

“If Holden Caulfield had been a gay girl from Montana, this is the story he might have told—it’s funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully rendered. Emily Danforth remembers exactly what it’s like to be a teenager, and she has written a new classic.” — Curtis Sittenfeld, bestselling author of PREP and AMERICAN WIFE

“A beautifully told story that is at once engaging and thoughtful. THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST is an important book—one that can change lives. ” — Jacqueline Woodson, award-winning author of AFTER TUPAC AND D FOSTER and HUSH

“This novel is a joy—one of the best and most honest portraits of a young lesbian I’ve read in years. Cameron Post is a bright, brash, funny main character who leaps off the page and into your heart! This is a story that keeps you reading way into the night—an absorbing, suspenseful, and important book.” — Nancy Garden, author of ANNIE ON MY MIND

“Danforth’s narrative of a bruised young woman finding her feet in a complicated world is a tremendous achievement: strikingly unsentimental, and full of characters who feel entirely rounded and real. A story of love, desire, pain, loss—and, above all, of survival. An inspiring read.” — Sarah Waters, author of THE LITTLE STRANGER

From the Publisher

★ “[An] ambitious literary novel, a multidimensional coming-of-age.

Booklist (starred review)

If Holden Caulfield had been a gay girl from Montana, this is the story he might have told—it’s funny, heartbreaking, and beautifully rendered. Emily Danforth remembers exactly what it’s like to be a teenager, and she has written a new classic.

Curtis Sittenfeld

A beautifully told story that is at once engaging and thoughtful. THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST is an important book—one that can change lives.

Jacqueline Woodson

This novel is a joy—one of the best and most honest portraits of a young lesbian I’ve read in years. Cameron Post is a bright, brash, funny main character who leaps off the page and into your heart! This is a story that keeps you reading way into the night—an absorbing, suspenseful, and important book.

Nancy Garden

Danforth’s narrative of a bruised young woman finding her feet in a complicated world is a tremendous achievement: strikingly unsentimental, and full of characters who feel entirely rounded and real. A story of love, desire, pain, loss—and, above all, of survival. An inspiring read.

Sarah Waters

Cameron is a memorable heroine with an unforgettable and important story to tell, and she does so with wit, emotion, and depth.

Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Cameron is a memorable heroine with an unforgettable and important story to tell, and she does so with wit, emotion, and depth.

Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

Set in rural Montana in the early 1990s, this lesbian coming-of-age story runs the gamut from heart-rending to triumphant, epic to mundane. The story opens just after Cameron's first kiss with a girl and just before the life-changing news that Cameron's parents have died in a car accident. Cam is 12 when readers first meet her, but several years pass over the course of the book's nearly 500 pages. Carefully crafted symbols--a dollhouse into which Cam puts stolen trinkets and mementos, the lake where her mother once escaped disaster only to die there 30 years later--provide a backbone for the story's ever-shifting array of characters and episodes, each rendered in vibrant, almost memoirlike detail. The tense relationship between Cam's sexuality and her family and community's religious beliefs is handled with particular nuance, as are her romantic and sexual entanglements, from a summer fling with an out, proud and smug Seattlite to an all-encompassing love for a seemingly straight female friend. Even when events take a dark and gut-punchingly inevitable turn, the novel remains at its heart a story of survival and of carving out space even in a world that wants one's annihilation. Rich with detail and emotion, a sophisticated read for teens and adults alike. (Fiction. 14 & up)

Kirkus Reviews