We may receive an affiliate commission from anything you buy from this article.A summer lark turns tragic, and a shattered family must carry on, in "Bug Hollow" (Penguin Press), the latest novel by Michelle Huneven, the author of "Round Rock" and "Blame." Read an excerpt below. "Bug Hollow" by Michelle Huneven $26 at Amazon Prefer to listen? Audible has a 30-day free trial available right now.Try Audible for free The summer when Sally Samuelson was eight, her brother Ellis graduated from high school and a few days later, he and his best friends, Heck Stevens and Ben Klosterman, drove up the coast in Heck's '64 Rambler American.
They promised to be back in a week.Sally was the only one who went outside to see them off.
She waved a dishrag and dabbed at pretend tears, then one or two real ones."Bye, little Pips!" Ellis yelled from the back seat—he called her Pipsqueak, with variations.
"See you in the funny papers!"Ellis had thick, curly yellow hair long enough to tuck behind his ears and he wore a baseball cap to keep it there.He'd lately grown incredibly tall and skinny; his pants rode so low on his hip bones, they seemed about to slip off.
Sally's sister, Katie, who was fourteen, called him El Greck after they saw El Greco's Christ on the Cross at the Getty; even their parents confirmed the resemblance. His last two years in high school, Ellis had a girlfriend named Carla, who was also tall and blond and liked to show off her stomach.In front of Ellis, she would say hi to Sally.
Sometimes Ellis would come into Sally's room when she was drawing on the floor; he'd sit by her and talk about his last baseball game or his weird calculus teacher, and sometimes he'd wonder how much he liked Carla and if she was even nice.Sally somehow knew not to say what she thought.
Anyway, Ellis spent most of his time playing ball with Ben and Heck.For their trip, they packed Heck's old Rambler with ...