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Authors: Emily M. Danforth

Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Social Issues, #Homosexuality, #Dating & Sex, #Religious, #Christian, #General

BOOK: The Miseducation of Cameron Post

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I didn’t know how to end, to feel like I was finished, so I did the one big thing I could think to do, the one movie trick, and I blew out the candle. And even though it was so sort of, I don’t know, sort of predictable, I guess, it still felt good and it felt like this act of closure or something. And then I swam toward the shore. I swam like I didn’t even think my body would let me swim, hard and fast, my muscles tight and unwilling, and I made them do it anyway. I kept the candle in my right hand. It thunked into the water with each downward pull, but I wasn’t letting go of it and I wasn’t slowing down. I swam as close to the shore as I could before my knees, scraping lake bottom, forced me to stop.

Adam sloshed into the water, soaking his shoes before grabbing me by the elbow, pulling me up fast and perfect as if he’d done it so many times before. Jane came around from behind him, her arms stretched wide with the bright striped beach towel strung between. She wrapped it around me. Then, one on either side, they walked me to the shore, which was black and endless. But there was a fire waiting. And there was a little meal laid out on a blanket. And there was a whole world beyond that shoreline, beyond the forest, beyond the knuckle mountains, beyond, beyond, beyond, not beneath the surface at all, but beyond and waiting.

Acknowledgments

T
hese are unforgiveably long: please forgive me. Somehow, my phenomenal agent (before she was actually my agent), Jessica Regel, came to believe in this book while I drove her from Lincoln to Omaha, the day muggy and stifling, the air-conditioning whirring without much effect, and me doing a very ham-fisted job of summarizing Cameron Post’s world to her. Though we very nearly ran out of gas, and I managed to get us a little lost on a back road trying to find some, Jessica’s encouragement started during that short trip, and her guidance and dedication to the book have immeasurably helped me, and it, ever since. I am likewise indebted to my editor, Alessandra Balzer, for her great enthusiasm and kindness, and for not only knowing, at every stage, what’s best for this novel, but for helping me to see why. Thanks, also, to the fantastic Sara Sargent—in fact, there is a whole car on my love train reserved for the entire team at Balzer & Bray.

I am endlessly grateful to the teachers and mentors who have offered me their insight, patience, and time: Eric Brogger, Julia Markus, and Paul Zimmerman at Hofstra University—thanks, Paul, for your early encouragement, your continued support all these years later, and your wit along the way. Thanks also to Gina Crance Gutmann, who made a small-town Montanan feel instantly welcome in the wilds of Long Island—without your support I’d never have survived freshman year, RA training, or poison oak.Though she wasn’t yet named, I developed Cameron’s voice during Danzy Senna’s fiction workshop at the University of Montana MFA program, and it was Danzy who first encouraged me to continue with the piece, originally written as a short story. In Missoula I was also privileged to study with Jill Bergman (all those “scribbling women”); Judy Blunt; Casey Charles; Deirdre McNamer; Brady Udall, who was a fantastic adviser; and Debra Magpie Earling, who has always been so generous to me. Most recently, at the PhD in Creative Writing Program at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln, I was honored to work with and learn from Amelia M. L. Montes; Gwendolyn Foster; Jonis Agee; Barbara DiBernard, who taught me so much about teaching and who is, without question, one of the all-around coolest people I have ever known; Judith Slater, who rooted for this novel early on and who is endlessly calm and wise; Gerald Shapiro, who has near-perfect comic timing, knows a thing or two about falafel, and made me want to come to UNL in the first place; and the effortlessly brilliant Timothy Schaffert, who always has the best answers to even my stupidest questions (of which there have been many), and whose catalog of 1970s pop-culture references never ceases to delight me.

I am so grateful to my talented and funny friends, many of them writers, all of them inspiring: Rose Bunch, who once put shiny dinosaur stickers on one of my story drafts, which is maybe the best positive feedback ever; Kelly Grey Carlisle, who let me use the time pre and post our swims to go on and on about the book and who is a phenomenal giver of pep talks; Carrie Shipers, who read and edited some of the earliest drafts and who said such smart things, asked such smart questions, and remembered the kinds of details, weeks and months later, that made me proud to have her as a reader; Mike Kelly, who is my nineties-music kindred spirit and who read the first half of the book when that’s all I had finished and asked where the rest of it was already; Adam Parkening, who tells me everything I need to know about films I’ll probably never watch; Rebecca Rotert, who is my favorite reason to visit Omaha and who needs to finish her own novel already (ahem); Marcus Tegtmeier, artist and website designer extraordinaire; and Ben Chevrette, who is absurdly stylish and charming, who was one of the two best things to happen to me in college, and who will always, always be my favorite gay.

Love and thanks to my family, the Danforths, the Loendorfs, the Finnemans, and the Edsells. Thanks especially to my brother, William, and sister, Rachel: that
Thriller-
related torture experiment of yours probably ultimately did me more good than harm. (Probably, though it’s still too early to say for certain.) I am also deeply grateful to my parents, for raising me to be curious about the world and everything in it and for their love and support as I’ve made my way.

Finally, and most of all, my love and thanks to Erica: for reasons too many to list. I know you tell people that you had nothing to do with the writing of this novel, and while that might technically be true, you had
absolutely everything
to do with my being able to write it at all.

In memory of Catherine Havilland Anne Elizabeth Mary Victoria Bailey Woods, who not only had the best and longest name of any friend I’ve ever had, but who was also the truest friend, the most honest friend, and the one with the greatest imagination.

About the Author

EMILY M. DANFORTH
was born and raised in Miles City, Montana. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Montana and a PhD in creative writing from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, where she’s worked as the assistant director of the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference. She teaches creative writing and literature courses at Rhode Island College and is coeditor of
The Cupboard
. This is her first novel. You can visit her online at www.emdanforth.com.

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Credits

This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Balzer + Bray is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

An altered version of the first chapter of this novel was previously published in
Dogwood: A Journal of Poetry and Prose.

The Miseducation of Cameron Post

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Danforth, Emily M.

The miseducation of Cameron Post / Emily M. Danforth. — 1st ed.

p. cm.

Summary: 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.

ISBN 978-0-06-202056-7 (trade bdg.)

1. Lesbians—Fiction. 2. Gays—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Montana—Fiction.] I. Title. II. Title: Mis-education of Cameron Post.

PZ7.D2136Mi 2012

[Fic]—dc22

2011001947

CIP

12 13 14 15 16 LP/BV 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition

Epub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN: 9780062101969

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