The Miseducation of Cameron Post

by Emily M. Danforth

Paperback, 2013

Status

Available

Call number

813.6

Publication

Balzer Bray (2013), Edition: Reprint, 480 pages

Description

In the early 1990s, when gay teenager Cameron Post rebels against her conservative Montana ranch town and her family decides she needs to change her ways, she is sent to a gay conversion therapy center.

User reviews

LibraryThing member sleahey
Twelve-year-old Cam's parents died in a car accident the same day that she first kissed a girl, and she feels responsible. As she moves through her teenage years and develops more friendships and romances, she is conflicted about her identity and attempts to keep it secret. When she is betrayed by
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her heart-throb girlfriend, her guardian aunt sends her to a "Christian" school to be cured. There is plenty of detail and character development, with somewhat graphic scenes of love-making. The ending was a disappointment to me. If there's a sequel, I'll want to read it.
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LibraryThing member stephxsu
Cameron Post’s parents died in a car accident the day she kissed a girl. That, and Cameron’s conservative Montana town, sets the tone for her romantic and sexual encounters. When Cameron’s in-over-her-head romance with another girl gets discovered, she is sent off to conversion camp.

THE
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MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST couldn’t have come at a better time. In a modern world where the topic of homosexuality is so frustratingly politicized, Cameron’s story is a welcome respite. With crisp, relatable prose, unique characters that burrow themselves in your mind, and character ambiguity that marks only the most brilliant and realistic novels, THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST shapes up to be one of the best YA debuts, if not one of the best books, of 2012.

There are so many things to like about this book. I like how danforth doesn’t politicize homosexuality. The homophobic characters in the book are people too, not soulless demons who arbitrarily spew homophobic comments; the conversion therapy setting isn’t depicted as all good or all bad, but rather just is. While this may frustrate some pro-gay marriage pundits who feel like this book doesn’t take a strong enough stance on the topic of homosexuality, I appreciate its honest-to-life portrayal, the gentle admittance that, in many circumstances, it’s impossible to neatly put issues and people into boxes.

Here is a book that shows that when you don’t write down to teenagers, you’re finally getting close to writing at their level. Little separates this from an adult book except for the age of its protagonist. Cameron’s observations and musings don’t have an age limit; in fact, her thoughts don’t have any kind of label that derives from our politically and religiously charged world. This means that THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST isn’t a story about a gay girl; it’s just a story about a girl.

The book isn’t perfect—and by this I mean the extraordinarily cheesy, over-the-top ending—but danforth proves in one fell swoop that she’s no amateur when it comes to writing resonant fiction. I wholeheartedly recommend THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST to anyone with an appreciation for well-written, emotionally resonant literature, and wait with eager anticipation to see what danforth has to show readers next.
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LibraryThing member kimtaylorblakemore
Wonderful book. The characters were all so well delineated, complex. My only issue was that it felt incomplete - I wanted to know more about what happened after the novel actually ended.
LibraryThing member FiliaLibri
I really tried to like this book, I tried really hard to do so but it wouldn’t work. In her debut novel Emily M. Danforth combines a whole lot of hot topics from common coming of age problems over the own parents’ tragic death to christian fantasim and the “curing” of homosexual teenagers.
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Unfortunately there are about as many weak points in this novel as there were topics.

The whole story is told in some kind of flashback: She looks back at the time when she first started exploring her own homosexuality. Unfortunately it never gets really clear from what point of her life she is looking back, how many years lie in between the ending of the story she tells and the point at which she tells it. On her homepage Danforth says that it’s about four years but for me this information was severly lacking while reading the book and bothered me quite a lot because it somewhat impaired Cameron’s voice as narrator.

The first part of this book is mostly about Cam starting to explore her own sexuality, exchanging secret kisses with her best friend and such stuff. Add to that her parents’ sudden death and the fact that her über-religious aunt moves in with her and you got your common teenage coming of age story. Unfortunaltely this part was filled with lots and lots of unneccessery details that made the whole part very drawn-out and dry and Cam’s struggles with her feelings as well as her aunt somewhat moved to the background and most of the focus lay on Cam and her friends smoking weed, drinking and stealing.

Then there’s the second part of the book and it’s like those two parts are completely separate stories. Of course, it’s still told by Cam and the style doesn’t change or anything but there’s just such a break in topics I felt kind of lost first and didn’t really know what to make out of this sudden change.

What had to happen happens and Cam’s aunt finds out about her niece’s homosexuality and decides to send her to a christian boarding school where gay teenagers are “cured”. The voice of the narrator doesn’t change one bit at this point. And whereas Cam’s dry and sarcastic voice was fitting for a coming out or coming of age story like the first part of the book it just doesn’t match this part. It’s in no way suitable for the whole theme of this part of the story.

That’s where it got clear to me why I had some problems early already: The author tends to go over certain events (like the death of Cam’s parents and this school) without allowing them to develop the depth and meaning they should have (and normally have by nature), thus making them seem flat and unimportant and giving the whole book this sidenote of “Hey, I know it sounds bad, but really, don’t be crybabies, it’s alright! I’m mean, dead parents? Being sent away to get “cured” from homosexuality? Please! That’s no big deal, is it?”.

And that really, really put me off. I mean, there are so many so important issues the book wants to deal with and this story should be so intense given everything that happens to Cam plus the stories of her classmates but the author just kind of drowned all of this in too much unnecessary details of the kids’ smoking, drinking and stealing activities.

I already said that there are about 4 years between the time the story takes places an the time it gets told and I think that’s kind of the problem, because Cam as a teen is pictured as someone actually deeply insecure who covers that up by making jokes and being sarcastic comments and in those four years she didn’t loose that habit. Thus many of the important scenes, not of which are pretty, don’t get the necessary attention.

All in all it somewhat felt like the author couldn’t really decide on which story she wanted to tell and what her message is intended to be. I mean, I guess Danforth, who’s gay herself and grew up at the same time in the same city as Cam, is judging institutions like the school Cam is sent to but it never got really clear. Thus I was really disappointed by this book as I expected a story much deeper, much more intense and much, much more critical.
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LibraryThing member EdGoldberg
In this Gay Pride month, it's great to be able to talk both about a well written book that addresses homosexuality, The Miseducation of Cameron Post, as well as introduce a debut author worth following, emily m. danforth.

In 1989, at the age of 12, Cameron Post kissed Irene Klauson, and liked it.
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The next day her parents were killed in an auto accident. Cam's born-again Aunt Ruth (her mother's sister) comes to Montana to take care of Cam.

In 1992, Cam and her friend Coley, an avowed heterosexual, develop a relationship. Coley's "guilt" forces her to out Cam, who has kept her sexual preferences hidden from Aunt Ruth and her grandmother. Aunt Ruth, of course, is shocked and sends her to God's Promise Christian School and Center for Healing, which is not designed to 'cure' Cam, but to make her closer to God, thus discovering the error of her ways.

emily m. danforth's prose are so descriptive, whether she's describing the annual Miles City Bucking Horse Sale, Cam's lifeguarding at Scanlon Lake or her intense feelings for Coley. With an opening line "The afternoon my parents died, I was out shoplifing with Irene Klauson." she hooks you from page one. You then go for a sometimes funny, sometimes romantic, sometimes sad, sometimes serious ride through three years of Cam's life. You live with her indecisions, her crushes, her guilt about the death of her parents, her antagonism towards Aunt Ruth and God's Promise. It's quite the roller coaster ride.

But danforth deftly puts forth Cam's feelings, offset by those of Reverend Rick and Lydia who run Promise. The thing is, The Miseducation of Cameron Post ends with such "promise" for this main character. For a totally rewarding read, The Miseducation of Cameron Post is perfect.
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LibraryThing member blackrabbit89
Emily Danforth’s novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post puts a fresh face on the classic queer-kid-coming-of-age-in-a-rural-conservative-area plot. It’s destined to become a classic in Young Adult queer fiction.

When I was thirteen, fourteen years old, I sought out queer YA books and read them
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in secret, locked in my bedroom, never daring to take them to school – Julie Anne Peters’s Keeping You a Secret and Far From Xanadu, Judy MacLean’s Rosemary and Juliet, Sara Ryan’s Empress of the World. I removed their dust jackets (so that the title and summary would not be easily accessible, should I leave them lying about somewhere) and kept them underneath my bed. I read them again, and again, and again, loving those characters that were like me. Those books were all I knew of the queer world. I treasured them.

At twenty-three, I fell in love with Cameron Post – with the way she cracks jokes to avoid feeling anything, with her half-hearted interest in her athletic abilities, with the way she transforms her old dollhouse with found and stolen items.

This is the story of a girl who mourns the deaths of her parents, falls in love with girls who don’t know how to love her back, and is forced to attend Christian boarding school to have her queerness “cured.” Cameron is creative, intelligent, funny, and resilient. Her narration is unique, spontaneous, and wise.

Emily Danforth has given us an in-depth look at Cameron’s world in Miles City, Montana. From the Gates of Praise Christian church, to Scanlon Lake, where Cameron works and swims competitively, to the abandoned hospital she loves to explore, to God’s Promise Christian boarding school – every bit of the novel’s setting is beautifully mapped out. Danforth was raised in Miles City, and this novel paints a vivid picture of it.

One of my favorite things about this novel was the complexity with which Danforth crafted her characters. No one was black and white, as is often seen in books like this, where the villains are the conservative Christians, and the hero(ine) is the queer person. In Cameron Post, yes, the Christians were doing harm to the queer characters, but it was also clear that many of them had been harmed themselves. Cameron, ever so observant, noticed that her teachers at boarding school (who had “overcome” same-sex attraction) were hurting. Even her aunt, who sent Cameron to boarding school, was not entirely unlikeable. She was doing, in her own miseducated way, what she thought was best for her niece.

This novel, more than any other I have read, reflects life as it really is, especially when it comes to queer and religious issues – complicated, messy, and full of gray areas. The characters – all of them – are written with compassion and empathy. And underneath it all is Cameron’s unique story, one that encompasses not only her queerness, but other tragedies and triumphs of her adolescence. I feel grateful to have discovered this book, and to have witnessed Cameron Post’s healing, learning, and growing up.
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LibraryThing member mikitchenlady
Cameron has just kissed a girl, the day before her parents are killed when their car veers off the road into Quake Lake. She experiences relief (at keeping her secret under wraps), shock and then grief at their loss. Her born-again Aunt Ruth moves in with Cameron and her grandmother, helping to
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raise her in the aftermath. Cameron, while trying to cope with her loss, is also dealing with the confusion of her own identity and attraction to girls. With careful teenage stealth, she manages to hide her secret, friendships/relationships, pot smoking, drinking and other ventures into young adulthood. When Coley Taylor moves into town, Cameron is a goner, totally in love and lust with this friendly, flirtatious and fun ostensibly heterosexual young woman. A series of events occurs, innocuous when viewed individually, which to Aunt Ruth sending Cameron to God’s Promise School, where homosexuality is viewed as a sin and the leaders try to bring their charges into a true, faith-based relationship with Christ. Somehow, Cameron has to survive this and not lose her identity.

This is a “can’t put down” kind of book, although somewhat hefty at 470 pages, an accomplishment for first time author emily m. danforth. Danforth’s writing is captivating, lyrical and seductive in a way, bringing the reader into those young adult years again (or reflecting it to YA readers). One gets the feel of the small western town of Miles City, the simpler life of its citizens and of young teens in particular – it is set in the 1990s, so modern enough but no cell phones, texting and internet to complicate the plot. Cameron feels like a real person, flawed, confused, honest and hopeful.

At times, I felt like the supporting cast members were a bit one-dimensional. Aunt Ruth, the leaders at God’s Promise and the townspeople after Cameron’s “sin” was revealed were just another group of narrow minded born-agains. While I really have a problem with their choices and reactions, they just seemed like sheep following flawed leaders but weren’t necessarily bad people. Another problem I had was with how the novel ended – I think it had to go where it did, but it left a whole lot unanswered, with scary and hopeful stuff to come for our characters I’m afraid.

Overall, a captivating read that will go on my multicultural lists at school.
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LibraryThing member abbylibrarian
I liked it, but it doesn't feel YA... Reads like an adult book featuring a teen character. There's a distance between the reader and Cameron that's more typical of adult novels. I'd recommend to fans of Wally Lamb's She's Come Undone.
LibraryThing member Sullywriter
As a YA novel, this story would benefit from a bit more editing but an impressive debut nonetheless. An honest, thoughtful coming-of-age story full of heartbreak and humor.
LibraryThing member matamgirl
I had hoped to like this more than I did. I mean there was nothing wrong with it and it was quite a good piece of GLBT YA fiction which is something that we need more of. So book it's not you, it's me.
LibraryThing member bibliofile55
Every teen, parent, teacher, counselor and clergy member should read this book. This coming-of-age novel is multi-layered and is for teens and adults who want to read about love, friendship and loss -- about a teenage girl who processes her sexual awakening as a lesbian. I don't want to give too
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much away, but Danforth's story also approaches the complex issues by further developing the political & religious aspects that teens and families must confront.
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LibraryThing member BDartnall
Well written, with one of the most frank, intelligent protagonists I've seen in awhile for YA fiction. Curtis Sittenfeld's comparison with Holden Caulfield is about right. While I haven't read any coming of age/lesbian books, Cameron Post and her small town Montana life was so realistic - teen life
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as it is, not as it may seem to others, especially adults. I was a bit surprised that it veered into her romantic life so quickly after the sudden death of her parents; I think I was expecting more exploration of her life without parents. While this has much to recommend it, it DOES deal with some very delicate topics, not just Cam's emerging lesbian sexual life, but her participation in a large evangelical church, and eventually a "re-education" religious camp. Another review called this an adult novel that some teens will like, and I guess that's how I'd categorize it - at 470 pages it's not for most teen (younger) readers.
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LibraryThing member mochap
Great coming-of-age story about a young lesbian orphan sent to a reprogramming Christian boarding school by her well-meaning but profoundly mistaken aunt/guardian to try to "cure" her. Great read.
LibraryThing member froxgirl
This is a most unique "coming of age" novel, written from the perspective of a girl who is attracted to girls. Maybe "gay" or "baby lesbian" would be more appropriate, but she is just in the discovery phase, and the reader is swept up in her wild journey. Filled with humor and growing
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self-knowledge, honest and frank, touching and memorable. Great writing. Most highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member WinterFox
So I realized a little while back that while I'd read a decently sizable number of books centered around gay characters, coming-of-age stuff and slice-of-life stuff and other stories where the leads or main secondary characters were gay, I'd not read anyhting that I could bring easily to mind with
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lesbian characters filling any of those roles. Surely something must have crossed my pages at some point - definitely they had in comics, but not in prose books. Thus, I thought, hey, probably time to rectify that, and that brings us to our book today, The Miseducation of Cameron Post.

We first meet our titular character at age 12, just after her first kiss with her best friend since childhood, Irene... which happens to be right about when her parents die in a car accident, and she can't help but feel some relief that they'll never know. Her devout Christian aunt Ruth moves back to town to live with Cameron and her grandmother, and Cameron herself moves into a guilty shell. She lives out a life of making friends with the edgier crowd in school, swimming competitively, and furtively forming secret relationships within her conservative small Montana hometown. These relationships all lead up to her strong attraction with Coley Taylor, a ranch girl from outside town who comes into her school that she slowly becomes better friends with, and then finds maybe the feelings are mutual. But as they come to consummate them, the secret comes clear, and Cameron gets shipped off to a Christian conversion therapy camp even further out there to try to fix her.

On the whole, this is pretty well managed, as a story. Cameron narrates the story the full way through, and you get to see her work out her boundaries and her longings. She gets some leeway because of her sudden orphan status in terms of how she leads her life, and support from an out-of-town friend she met through swimming, but there's not a lot of support in small-town Montana for lesbians, particularly as the book is set around the early '90s. The world Cameron inhabits is very closely observed, though, and you get a real sense for first the town she's in and the people who live there, and then the residents of the therapy facility, their worldviews, what feels possible to them and what doesn't.

That said... I don't know. I liked it well enough, but I came out of the story feeling somewhat cool about it. I do think it was well-written, but perhaps it is a bit too closely narrated, in the final analysis. Also, I'd have liked it if more of her friendships, both with boys and girls, were less charged - you get the feeling like Miles City, Montana was rather a hotbed of young lesbians, insofar as most of the girls she becomes friends with do seem to be interested in her physically, and then some of the boys, as well. Cameron's a charismatic character, sure, but I think it goes too far that way. And the second part of the story, in the facility, while given some space to breathe, never really comes together for me the way the Miles City part of the book does.

I did like the complexity to the characters and their relationships, and the size and feeling of the world - Montana is just a physically big place, and it's no big city. Within her family and community in Miles City, too, even the people who turn on Cameron are not shown as shrill outright monsters, but complex, confused individuals; that's even true for the people who run the conversion therapy facility. This seems realer, and more powerful for all that - in a way, their behavior is worse, because one would hope good people would know better, but then: early '90s, that's right. We weren't quite there yet.

Anyway... I don't know. It's a good, quiet coming-of-age story and self-realization, and the paths it walks are worth following, but... I didn't really love it. Maybe it just didn't quite land right for me, even if I'm glad I gave it a shot. I'll have to try something else along these lines to see.
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LibraryThing member miyurose
Cameron Post is a young girl who has basically the worst thing happen to her — her parents are killed in a car accident. Coincidentally, that same day is the first time she kisses a girl, and because children aren’t logical, she connects the two events in her mind, thus beginning several years
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of confusion and denial and secrecy.

In the mid-90s, rural Montana isn’t really a bastion of progressive or inclusive thought. Cameron had a difficult path to navigate as she tries to figure out who she is and who her real friends are. And when one of those friends betrays her, she has to start all over again in an even more difficult environment.

As an adult, I really related to the time period in the book. I would have been right around Cameron’s age, and the story made me think about what would have happened if there were a Cameron in my hometown, in my high school. Heck, there may have been a Cameron, and I just didn’t know it.

I do have a few minor criticisms. For one, I thought it was a little too long. And two, it ends *really* abruptly. I actually would forgo some of the earlier parts of the book in exchange for a little more followup. Though I guess it says good things about the story that I want to know what happens next!
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LibraryThing member kimtaylorblakemore
Wonderful book. The characters were all so well delineated, complex. My only issue was that it felt incomplete - I wanted to know more about what happened after the novel actually ended.
LibraryThing member Jennie_103
Good, but felt a little long - perhaps needed some more editing? I was also surprised that someone who was as good at lies as Cameron was stupid enough to keep evidence of her lesbianism.

I did like the casual inclusion of a disabled character without making it at all about her difference and
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showing her strength.
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LibraryThing member gayla.bassham
I really want to say something profound about this book that will make everyone want to read it immediately. But I can't think of anything other than: "I loved it. Read it. Immediately. I'll wait here, and we'll discuss when you're finished." Yes, it's sort of YA (in a sense -- the protagonist is a
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teenager, but I think the book is really intended for adults), but don't let that scare you off. Read it. It's awesome.
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LibraryThing member mjspear
A vivid, first-hand picture of growing up gay in small-town Montana in the 1970s (pre-Internet) Cameron Post is no stranger to tragedy: she's lost her parents to a car crash and other relatives to a flash flood at a campground. Cameron worries that sexual feelings towards her friend and an
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impulsive kiss may have been the cause of her bad luck. When her enticing friend, Irene, moves away Cam thinks she can get over these feelings but then the beautiful cowgirl Coley Taylor appears. After some flirtation and escalating sexual experimentation, Cameron's Aunt Ruth intervenes and packs Cam off to a camp for conversion therapy. Ultimately, after resisting the camp, Cameron agrees to be open to possible change. She doesn't change her sexual orientation but is somewhat more honest with herself. In the end, she runs away with some of her fellow "deviants." I loved the book but was disappointed with the last half of the story. The final chapters on the "God's Promise" experience is given short shrift, in my opinion, and the ending was unsatisfactory. In addition, I have a minor quibble with the sexual content: while not explicit, the author does have a series of sexual encounters. She is pretty promiscuous and her sexual aggression put me off (regardless of orientation). In all, a great portrait of a person who feels "different" and triumphs over that difference. Mature teens and esp. those with an interest in sexual orientation / gay issues.
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LibraryThing member keristars
The Miseducation of Cameron Post is written with beautiful, evocative language that really makes the summers (and a couple Christmases) in Montana feel present, and the nostalgic memories of the early 1990s suddenly vivid.

I avoided reading it for years because I prefer alternate universe stories
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where homophobia doesn't exist or is minimal, rather than this kind of "problem" story. I'm also uncomfortable reading about the heavy use of drugs and alcohol. I knew about the homophobic content but had no idea about the extent of pot use when I picked up the book.

To be honest, I was deeply immersed in the story and enjoyed the writing style a lot, but also I probably shouldn't have read it at all. danforth says she was inspired to write the story after learning about conversion therapy, and the second half of the book is about Cam's experiences at such an institution for young people. It was frustrating for me to read about this fictional place which is honestly a lot more mild than anything I've ever heard of or experienced, but also it brought back a lot of the ugly stuff I experienced as a young queer person without really addressing any of it.

It felt to me that danforth did a lot of research but maybe didn't really understand the situation or wanted to have a light touch, so she keeps the whole episode in soft focus with only a little bit of direct commentary on how harmful and abusive these religious practices can be for queer kids, especially the conversion therapy. Also, too, Cam as the narrator is ambivalent at best about religion and isn't sure if she really believes any of it, which seems to keep her from engaging too much - but she does allude occasionally to how she feels like the place and fake therapy is getting to her and messing with her head despite herself, without really saying how. I would have really liked more clarity and statements about that, because as it was, I was really distressed to have all the stuff I worked out in therapy being brought back up without much comment or analysis. It was just there, mostly accepted because Cam didn't notice or understand, and my immersion in Cam's narrative made it too immediate to me.

But anyway, I did love the first half of the book. Cam is telling the story from a future date and acknowledges here and there where she misunderstood things or re-orders events, which isn't very common in first-person novels, and I enjoyed it a lot. The first half is about Cam entering adolescence and all of the identity-exploration and growing up that involves, and also realizing that she likes girls around the same time that her parents die unexpectedly. She lives in a small, conservative town, and it's 1989, so she doesn't take it very well, but also can't change who she is. Her grief and guilt guide her actions as she grows older, and I thought danforth did a lovely job showing this. The chapters are roughly grouped by years, but Cam's growth (coming of age) is also marked by changes in her friendships and her interests in movies, swimming, or a part-time job. The narrative is wonderful at showing without actually saying what is going on with Cam and how she feels - because, of course, even in an extended flashback, a first-person narrative doesn't always connect dots or see the importance in things that an outsider, the reader, might.

Most of the novel takes place in the summers, which is probably symbolic somehow, but I'm not in school anymore so I'm not going to put too much effort into figuring out the fine details, only that the summers are when Cam explores her identity most and has a certain freedom to her days - it's during the school year, in winter, when she buttons up and endures everyone else trying to direct her. She has a few bad traits like a lot of teens, which give her character some life even as it felt frustrating to read as wheel-spinning or the opposite of growth, and which probably also have symbolic importance: the pot smoking, but also she has a habit of stealing little things and always avoiding serious topics.

So it's a good book - funny and touching and lovely as appropriate - but for me, the first half is stronger than the second. I feel like the conversion therapy section loses a lot of the life of the first part and the not-quite-right feeling I had about the details is unfortunate. I'm also not a fan of how it dredged up old emotions and anxieties without providing a really good narrative catharsis. While there is one, it's more about Cam's grief and dealing with her parents' death than it is about the conversion therapy.

I can see why this book won awards and got noticed, especially with the state of queer books the way it was in 2012, but I would be careful who I recommended this to. People who weren't raised religious or don't have the anti-queer religious background may be okay with it, but folks like me who got the lessons about being unnatural, or innately sinful (whether these were deliberate instruction or passively learned), and who struggle with it still might want to take a breather or have someone to talk to while reading. I really wish I had better trigger/content warnings in advance, but I don't really know what they could have been.
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LibraryThing member jothebookgirl
Cameron lost her parents when she was twelve due to a car crash. During the time of their death, Cameron and her best friend Irene were shoplifting in a grocery store. She had a secret, she kissed her best friend (which is a girl), and she didn’t want her parents to know. Although after her
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parent’s death, Cameron was treated differently; people puttied her, and were kinder to her. Cameron’s conservative aunt becomes her guardian and she must hide the secret even more. Irene goes off to boarding school.Later, Cameron becomes best friends with a girl named Coley, and “dates” a boy named Jamie. Being with Jamie helped her mask her sexuality, although one day, her Aunt Ruth finds out the truth. Ruth, being a true Christian doesn’t want Cameron to be gay and tries to change who she is. Cameron is sent to a de-gaying school, God’s Promise, to try and make her right.
Even a Proms a Camp, Cameron becomes more adventurous; drinking and smoking pot. As we read further in the novel, we see her become more of a teenager, and goes against her Aunt Ruth’s beliefs.
I recommend this book to anyone. The book is well written and has many details and still times I became weary of Cameron Post, but plodding through proved its worth. There is a historical interest in the story concerning Quake Lake, the camp her parents were going to when their car went off the road.. The lake was formed as the result of an earthquake in 1959, killing 28 people and doing millions of dollars worth of damage.
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LibraryThing member kemilyh1988
Quite good. Definitely should not be challenged by parents as there is nothing controversial contained within. Cameron is a strongly written character, as were the others in this book. It was a bit upsetting at times, but very thought provoking.
LibraryThing member Menshevixen
Amazingly, there were no tears until the Promise kids got pie at Perkins.
LibraryThing member LibroLindsay
4.5 stars? Maybe 5 when I sleep on it?

It wasn't without its faults, but it was otherwise so SPOT ON with everything, EVERYTHING, I TELL YA!

Physical description

480 p.; 8 inches

ISBN

0062020579 / 9780062020574
Page: 1.5951 seconds