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The Miseducation of Cameron Post Kindle Edition


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.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

*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

Review

★ “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

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About the author

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Emily M. Danforth
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emily m. danforth's debut (YA) novel, THE MISEDUCATION OF CAMERON POST (2012), was translated into half-a-dozen languages and won The Montana Book Award and was a finalist for both the Morris Award and a Lambda Literary award. It was also adapted into a Sundance award winning feature film of the same name in 2018. emily’s second novel, PLAIN BAD HEROINES, is a meta-gothic sapphic romp about a cursed New England boarding school and the horror film being made about that school. PLAIN BAD HEROINES will be published by HarperCollins in October of 2020.

emily has an MFA in Fiction from the University of Montana and a Ph.D in English-Creative Writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She lives in Rhode Island with her wife Erica, her mother Sylvia, and two of the most spoiled dogs on the planet, Kevin and Sally O’Malley.

emily was born and raised in Miles City, Montana, a cattle town best known for its Bucking Horse Sale-which was once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records for hosting the most intoxicated people, per capita, of any US event. She has worked as a lifeguard, a swim coach, a not-at-all reliable waitress and bartender, an aquatics director at a YWCA, and as a Professor of English and Creative Writing. You can often find her on ebay checking her auction bids for things like vintage store display stock of toothbrushes. (No, but really. Her wife would prefer her to maybe not have quite so many collections, but her family will confirm that she has been this way since childhood.) emily's favorite 1980’s slasher movie is April Fools’ Day (1986) and no, she doesn’t want to hear why you think she’s wrong about that choice.

You might want to visit her here: www.emdanforth.com

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