CRASH
AND BURN is a powerful, emotional knockout of a novel
about the complicated relationship between a
profoundly–troubled teenager who takes his school
hostage at gunpoint and the profoundly untroubled student
who stops him. Two lucky winners will win their own copy
from HarperCollins.
On April 21, 2008, Steven "Crash" Crashinsky saved more
than a thousand people when he stopped his classmate David
Burnett from taking their high school hostage armed with
assault weapons and high–powered explosives. You
likely already know what came after for Crash: the
nationwide notoriety, the college recruitment, and, of
course, the book deal. What you might not know is what came
before: a story of two teens whose lives have been
inextricably linked since grade school, who were destined,
some say, to meet that day in the teachers' lounge of
Meadows High. And what you definitely don't know are the
words that Burn whispered to Crash right as the siege was
ending, a secret that Crash has never revealed.
Until now.
Michael Hassan's shattering novel is a tale of first love
and first hate, the story of two high school seniors and the
morning that changed their lives forever. It's a portrait of
the modern American teenage male, in all his brash,
disillusioned, oversexed, schizophrenic, drunk, nihilistic,
hopeful, ADHD–diagnosed glory. And it's a powerful
meditation on how normal it is to be screwed up, and how
screwed up it is to be normal.