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Knowles's debut work A Separate Peace has become recognized as one of the most popular and enduring coming-of-age novels of the 1950s, attracting frequent comparisons to J. D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye. Revolving around the friendship between two adolescent boys in a New England boarding school, the novel describes in rich, evocative language the comparatively idyllic lives of schoolchildren during the first years of American involvement in World War II. Inspired by Knowles's short story "Phineas," which appeared in Cosmopolitan in May 1956, A Separate Peace has become a best seller and a staple in elementary and high school curricula.