My provost flagged The Miseducation of Cameron Post for me after hearing about it on NPR. To me those were two good reasons to order Danforth’s debut novel. Though I seldom read young adult books, this was an engaging story, written in a multi-layered and well-crafted manner that can also stand up to an adult audience. Its many film and cultural references are a special delight to those of us who remember the ‘80s.Two significant events occur one day in the summer of 1989 for 12-year-old Cameron Post in rural Montana. One afternoon while sitting in a hay loft, Cameron’s best friend Irene dares her to kiss her. Since this story is told looking back, Cameron fills us in on all the emotional twists and turns of this interlude, and we know from the beginning that Cameron is attracted to girls. Later that night, while spending the night at Irene’s, Cameron is told to get up and get dressed – Irene’s dad is taking her home, where her grandmother is “waiting for her.†Riding in silence, Cameron is terrified that he knows about the kiss, and that this is what her grandmother will speak to her about. When she gets home and is told that her parents were killed in an automobile accident, she is relieved that her first lesbian encounter wasn’t discovered. In her shock, her relief is mixed with grief, forming a major theme in the plot.
When her Aunt Ruth moves in to take over guardianship responsibilities, Cameron’s life takes a sharp turn to the right and she joins a local born again church. Despite this, Cameron has a few more same-sex encounters as she moves toward high school. Then she is found out, and is shipped off to a Christian boarding school designed to overcome sexual sin (ie gay/lesbianism).
Although the story unwinds in a predictable way, it is Cameron’s honest and believable narration, how she sorts through her feelings and tries to survive in her various communities, that makes this story stand out. Every library that has even a small young adult collection should add this book.
Reviewed by Morgan Gwenwald
SUNY New Paltz
