Spring 2019, Wild Readers 5 discussion

For the LGBTQI+ novel I decided to read “The Miseducation of Cameron Post” by Emily M. Danforth. This was a good but long read, I definitely did not check page numbers before I purchased the book. I’m the type of reader who starts to go crazy with 350+ page books, so not going to lie I started to get bored. But, the plot of the book was a great coming of age novel set in the late 1980’s. Cameron Post does not have it easy she is a twelve year old girl, whose parents recently passed away in a car crash and is figuring out her homosexuality while living in Montana. When her parents passed away her aunt Ruth and grandmother who are VERY conservative come and live with her, which doesn’t help or make Cameron feel very comfortable living in their home. The story takes place in Miles City, Montana. All before her life began to take a turn for the worse Cameron was developing a crush on one of her close friends Irene, but this was kept as a secret. Cameron had to leave and attend a different middle school and her feelings did not make it very far. While living with Ruth and her grandmother a relationship between her and another girl, Coley Taylor develops but news eventually reaches her family. Her quite conservative family members do not support this and go to extremes to enroll Cameron in a conversion camp called “God’s Promise”. Cameron falls into a group with “misfits” who know they don’t belong there. Throughout the rest of the novel Cameron is defiant and comes to conclusion that she will not be what her family wants her to be. She eventually finds her new family where she belongs is with the other misfits at camp. I love how the book took a not so good situation and turned it into a light hearted ending.