Howard Pinderhughes’ latest book begins with the funeral of a young man he knew.

“It’s one of the many I’ve been to, and it looked like prom – coats and tails and limos,” says Pinderhughes, a sociologist at UC San Francisco School of Nursing. “When you scratch the surface, you understand it’s a rite of passage that replaces some that normally exist in the development of a young person…almost a celebration of survival.”