Book excerpt: "Bug Hollow" by Michelle Huneven

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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

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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 sleeping bags, the small smelly tent the Samuelson kids used on camping trips, and a cooler full of sodas. After ten days, when Ellis hadn't come back, Heck showed up at the Samuelsons' front door with the tent. Sally answered his knock.

"Ellis decided to stay away for a few more days," he said.

"Stay where?" Sally's mother said from behind her.

"With some girl he met," said Heck. "Not sure where, exactly."

"Well, where did they meet?"

"On a beach around Santa Cruz."

That was all her mother could get out of Heck. "Some girl has snagged Ellis," she told Sally's father when he came home from work.

"Good for her," he said.

"How can you say that, Phil?" her mother cried. "El's such an innocent. What if she's trouble?"

Hinky, their Manchester terrier, cocked her head at one parent, then the other; she followed conversations—they'd tested her by standing in a circle and tossing the conversation back and forth. Hinky shifted her attention to each speaker in turn.

"What if he doesn't come back in time for his job?"

Ellis was supposed to be a counselor at the day camp he'd attended since first grade.

"Let's worry about that when the time comes," Sally's father said.

The camp's start date came and went.

An excerpt from "Bug Hollow," published by Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Michelle Huneven. Reproduced with permission.

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"Bug Hollow" by Michelle Huneven

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