The Miseducation of Cameron Post
*Starred Review* It begins with a preadolescent kiss between protagonist Cameron and her friend, Irene. The very next day Cameron’s parents die in an automobile accident, and the young girl is left riddled with guilt, feeling her forbidden kiss was somehow responsible for the accident. This is an old convention of GLBT literature, but freshly handled here and given sophisticated thematic weight. As Cameron grows into her teenage years, she recognizes that she is a lesbian. After several emotional misadventures, she meets and falls in love with the beautiful Coley, who appears to be bisexual. Both girls attend the same fundamentalist church, and when Cameron’s conservative Aunt Ruth discovers the affair, she remands Cameron to God’s Promise, a church camp that promises to “cure” young people of their homosexuality. Such “religious conversion therapy” is rooted in reality, and Cam’s experiences at the camp are at the heart of this ambitious literary novel, a multidimensional coming-of-age reminiscent of Aidan Chambers’ equally ambitious This Is All (2006). There is nothing superficial or simplistic here, and Danforth carefully and deliberately fleshes out Cam’s character and those of her family and friends. Even the eastern Montana setting is vividly realized and provides a wonderfully apposite background for the story of Cam’s miseducation and the challenges her stint in the church camp pose to her development as a mature teenager finding friendship and a plausible future. Grades 9-12. --Michael Cart