Drohan is a professional editor and writer who specializes in fiction and nonfiction for young adults and children. In the following essay, she explores a concept prevalent in The Crazy Horse Electric Game and other novels in the young-adult genre, which concerns a loss of childhood innocence and the idea of confronting one's mortality during adolescence. While life's learning experiences often occur during tragic events, those hard lessons later prove invaluable as young people try to make sense of their lives.

Critics have recognized that Chris Crutcher's The Crazy Horse Electric Game explores how a young man must dig deep within himself to find his inner strength. It's a story of personal courage, and the structure of the story highlights the journey that many young people must take in order to understand their place in the world. The novel is told from the point of view of...