Flanders Point — Jacquie Gordon

A young girl at a Connecticut private school falls in love with her English teacher in this turbulent and tender first novel by the winner of the Yale University Willet Prize.

Flanders Point is a spit of land on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, the site of a small, financially troubled girls' prep school called Haddam. To this school comes Charlotte Delafield, a gawky teen hoping to surmount the aftermath of her parents' difficult divorce, and Brian Parton, a restless young writer and English teacher. Through the everyday events of Charlotte's senior year--conflicts and misunderstanding in the classroom, as well as flashes of inspiration and learning, an annual outdoor Shakespeare production, and walks in the still, wild marshland of Flanders Point--the two find themselves drawn to each other. Under increasing emotional pressure, the barrier between student and teacher cracks but does not break--until graduation day.

In Flanders Point, Jacquie Gordon shows the promise of early Pat Conroy. And the novel conjures up those other coming-of-age classics we all treasure, like A Separate Peace and Catcher in the Rye.