“The turning point in my youth, which gave me the direction of my life, was the murder of my elementary school teacher, Birdsall Snow; which I, as a boy, witnessed. Mr. Snow was the gentlest soul I had ever met; and he died a hero. No one had expected it of him. The town, and my parents in particular, considered Snow a fool—indeed, a clown . . . He was a failed priest; he spoke with an English accent from a boyhood in private English schools; he seemed to love nothing but teaching and his students. It wasn’t just Mr. Snow dying that changed me… It was who Mr. Snow was and the way he died that so changed me. It was seeing such an absurd, unheroic person accept so brave a death.” In the tradition of To Kill A Mockingbird, comes the new novel from the author of The Ice Cathedral (“SUPERB…BRILLIANT…SUSPENSEFUL” New York Sunday Times Book Review, “GENIUS” Washington Post “MARVELOUS” Boston Globe, “THE BOOK HURLS ALONG” Newsday; motion picture rights sold to Ron Howard) and Beyond Control (“THE FIRST FEW PAGES ARE ENOUGH TO CAPTURE AND ENTHRALL THE READER.” United Press International. Motion picture rights sold to Ken Schur.) The unforgettable novel of a childhood in the Fifties in a sleepy town on Long Island's Great South Bay and the crisis of conscience that rocked it. Compassionate, dramatic, and deeply moving, The End of Innocence takes readers to the roots of human behavior - to innocence and experience, kindness and cruelty, love and hatred, humor and pathos.