Quote: 12-year-old George Mellish, tired of beatings for both real and fancied misdeeds at the hands of his foster parents, runs away from home by hopping a freight train and lands somewhere east of the Mississippi River. The first person he meets is Dirty Jim Helliman who lives in a fantastically filthy hovel and with whom George feels a kindred spirit, both having "suffered" at the hands of a clean woman. It is (really dirty) Dirty Jim that tells George of the mythical, eight-foot bogey man called "The Fool Killer." George gets sick and Dirty Jim takes him to town where Mrs.Ova Faversham takes charge of the feverish boy. When Blessing Angeline, Mrs. Faversham's 10-year-old daughter, tells George that her mother intends to return him to his foster parents, George hits the road again. He meets Milo Bogardus, a young Civil War veteran, who has been robbed of his memory by a war wound, and is as lost in his own way as George. They come upon a camp meeting, where the fanatical Reverend Spotts is conducting a revivalist meeting and during the religious frenzy, George blacks out. He comes to and is alone, and is unaware that the Reverend has been murdered, and starts in his search to find Milo. He finds a home with the Dodds, small town store keepers. When, at supper, Dodds makes mention of the murder of the Reverend Spotts, George blurts out that "The Fool Killer done it" and tells them the legend as told to him by Dirty Jim. That evening, while George lies in bed, a shadow appears at his window. It is the figure of a tall, gaunt apparition, ax in hand ready to strike---"The Fool Killer!"

   

Quote: Finistère was promoted as a divorce novel—focusing on the detrimental effects of divorce on children. While that may have been the company line and no-doubt created an opening for larger acceptance of the work, it cannot be denied that the focus of the novel is a gay relationship—an adolescent's first love and his family's response to it. An odd sort of boarding school novel, the story of the tragedy of divorce, and a classic of gay literature, Finistère has appeared in more editions than any other fictional work by Fritz Peters.

Peters' second novel focuses on the tumultuous adolescence of Matthew Cameron. As Gore Vidal noted in his much quoted book review in The Saturday Review of Literature (Murder of Innocence, v.34:no.8, p.13, February 24, 1951), the first third of this book lays out the many betrayals experienced by young Matthew. The middle third lays out the story of Matthew's relationship with Michel, and the final third follows the rapid disintegration of Matthew's world. 

It is the summer of 1927. Thirteen-year-old Matthew's parents are divorcing and he and his mother are relocating to Paris. She has decided Matthew is too attached to her and to Scott Fletcher, a close friend of the family so Matthew is to be enrolled in the boarding school, St. Croix École des Garçons. Soon after Matthew's arrival at the school, André, a classmate, shares some dirty pictures with him and they become friends. The headmaster approves of them sharing a room and before long they are having a sexual relationship—a relationship about which Matthew feels quite guilty.

While with his family at the Christmas holiday, Matthew meets his mother's new 'friend', Paul Dumesnil. While Paul makes an effort to include him in conversations and activities, Matthew now feels like an outsider. As a condition of his parents divorce, Matthew isn't permitted to see his father until he reaches age 16. His father effectively disappeared from his life, and now he feels he is losing his mother as well. 

By the following fall 1928, his mother marries Paul. Scott, whom Matthew has idolized for years, has become engaged to Françoise. Scott, who had always been available to him is now focused on his relationship with Françoise and seems to have no time for him. Françoise seems to be the only adult who recognizes Matthew's attachment to Scott for what it is.

After a summer with his family, Matthew returns to school in the fall of 1929, to discover that André has gone, having moved to a different school. Alone and without support from any of his relationships, he feels lost. Michel Garnier, a new athletic coach, has joined the school and upon the boys' first outing for a swim in the Seine, Matthew swims too far and seems to give in to the current pulling him under. The relationship with Michel begins after he saves the drowning Matthew and helps to nurse him back to health. Their relationship brings Matthew back to life, feeling true love for the first time without all of the guilt he felt about his relationship with André. However, Matthew is innocent and this idealized first love can't insulate him from the cruelty of the world or of the adults in his life. 

It is no surprise that the ending of a gay novel from this time is likely to end tragically—most (but not all) did. As might be surmised by the many editions over the years, Finistère was popular among gay men despite the ending. The central message of the novel isn't that gay people are bad, or in this case, the problem isn't that Matthew is gay. The problem is that the adults in Matthew's life are incapable of supporting him.