Horgan especially likes examining the lives of children and then following their adult lives in sequels. Things as They Are (1964) is about the child Richard who lives within an inner world of his own creation barred even to his loving parents. In Everything to Live For (1968), Richard, now eighteen, spends a summer with his older cousin Charles James Maximilian Chittenden who is rich and gifted, and befriends Max's girlfriend Marietta in a way suggestive of the Billy-Marilee-Phil relationship. In The Thin Mountain Air (1977), Horgan's first novel after the success of Whitewater, he then follows Richard's life as an adult.

In his earliest novels, this interest in the development of the individual from childhood through adolescence is also evident. Main Line West (1936) chronicles the birth and rootless youth of Danny Milford, and A Lamp on the Plains (1937) continues to tell his story.

In this novel Danny Milford's...