Michelle Huneven is a writer of smart and warm but prickly novels—always set in California—and I’ve been recommending them to people for years. Her latest, Bug Hollow (Penguin Press, June 17), drops in at different points in the lives of the Samuelson family after their son and brother, Ellis, dies just as he’s about to start college, leaving behind a pregnant girlfriend. Our starred review calls it “Huneven’s best work to date,” and it gave me the chance to meet her over email; our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What, if anything, is the throughline of your books?

I would say that my ongoing theme is stated most succinctly in Jamesland, by the former chef Pete, who has lost his restaurant, destroyed his marriage, is not allowed to see his son, and is recovering from a suicide attempt. As Pete roves his neighborhood streets, he continuously asks: How do people live in this world?—a world that is so beautiful and also at times unbearable.My characters almost all engage this question. How does Patsy in Blame live with being a murderer—and then, 20 years later, with discovering that she’s not one? How can Cress in Off Course live without the long, powerfully addictive, on-again off-again love affair that centers her life? In Bug Hollow, how can the Samuelson family go on without their brilliant, sweet Ellis? You could also restate this to say that all my books are about the spiritual and mortal struggle to find love and meaning—and to do the right thing—in this life.

What was the character or scene that originally started you writing Bug Hollow?

It began with a prompt I gave to my writing students at UCLA: Write a story about a sibling you never had. The prompt got me thinking about how, in real life, my mother had a very young uncle named Ellis who drowned before I was born. So starting with a family that was similar—but not that similar—to my own, I began to write a story with an older brother named Ellis, a star athlete and math whiz. The story, unfinished, hung around on my desktop for at least five years. A couple of years ago, after I finished Search, I went back to Ellis and his family—and did what I couldn’t bring myself to do before. I drowned him.  

What writers have influenced you, in general or in writing Bug Hollow?

I’d say Katherine Mansfield for how she rips off the scrim of upper-middle-class life to reveal the pure terror of being alive; Alice Munro for her glorious swerves through time; William Trevor and Yiyun Li for their unsparing realism and compassion; Mona Simpson for her piercing insights into family life. In structuring Bug Hollow, I was definitely inspired by Joan Silber and her prismatic collections of interrelated stories.

What role does California play in your work?

I am that unusual thing, a native Californian. And I have always proudly considered myself a regional writer. All of my books have taken place in California—the Southern Sierra, the citrus groves near Ojai, various small cities around Los Angeles. California, even just Southern California, is almost too big a canvas. Two books ago, I vowed to place all future books in my beloved Altadena, which is rich enough in history, geography, and colorful human interest to supply innumerable books. 

Laurie Muchnick is the fiction editor.