Excerpt from Hot Springs Drive by Lindsay Hunter, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

In the summer the air inside the garage turned thick, scented heavily with the smell of the Lindens' cars and the wood walls and dust and faintly with the evergreen-scented candles Theresa used in her Christmas Eve centerpiece. On the bare concrete floor there was an oil stain in the shape of a hand, its fingers splayed wide. It was a late summer morning the day Theresa Linden's body was found there, her face in the hand, her body curled as if it were in sleep, her hair blooming petals of blood and bone.

Theresa is seven years old, watching her sister use a rope to swing way out over the lake. Carissa lets go, falls, the water exploding around her, but it's Theresa who gasps just before Carissa goes in. Like she can hold Carissa's breath for her. Carissa surfaces, coughing, raking her hand down her face and over her hair. "Come on," she calls to Theresa. But the rope is too far away to reach, dangling into the mucky water. "I think the hot dogs are ready," she yells back. It seems like a sure way to distract her sister, but Carissa doesn't go for it. "Oh my God, Rese," she laughs. "You're just afraid you'll break your vagina." This is how Theresa comes to be seen, in the way that family lore clings to stories that are illustrative but unfair, as someone who is afraid to take risks. "Forget it," her sister will say any time she refuses to try a cartwheel, or a cigarette is offered, or someone holds a car door open, offering to whisk her away from school. "She's afraid she'll break her vag."

Theresa is eighteen, and Carissa is twenty and pregnant, and the sisters are walking through Sears pointing at clothes and toys and soft, fluffy blankets the baby will need. They've named him Roy, a joke name Theresa came up with to cheer Carissa up, but now the name has stuck, the baby is Roy. Roy will have ears that stick out and scrawny legs like Carissa. "Thank God I don't have to buy any of this crap," Carissa says, looking away. Theresa knows she's trying not to cry. Roy is being adopted by a couple they're not allowed to meet. The day he's born, Theresa's mother has to ask the doctor to sedate Carissa so they can take the baby from her. "Don't let them take him," she says to Theresa. Her hair is sweaty on her forehead, her face pale. She's whispering, but everyone can hear her. They all nod, of course, of course, no one will take him. Finally, she falls asleep, and Theresa watches Roy as they change his diaper, swaddle him in a new blanket, and wheel him out of the room in his bassinet. When Carissa wakes, it's only Theresa in the room. Carissa sits up, looks around, knows. "I knew you'd be useless," she says, and puts her hands over her face. They watch Ricki Lake on mute. At the commercial breaks, Theresa hands Carissa a new Kleenex.

Theresa is twenty-two, lying on the futon in her apartment, its broken spring knuckling her shoulder. She's just had an abortion. She holds the remote but the TV is dark. She turns and vomits into the trash can she'd placed there just in case. She traded shifts so she could have this and the next day off. Her boyfriend thinks she's cramming for a final. She's told no one, only written a few lines of it in her diary. She longs to call Carissa, but imagining what her sister will say is enough to stop her. Carissa has two children now, goes to church every Sunday, works as the supervisor at a landscap- ing company, celebrates Roy's birthday every year. Ungrateful is maybe something she would say to Theresa. Evil. Careless. None of it is louder than the relief Theresa feels.

Theresa is twenty-six, working in customer relations at the corporate offices of a national bank. She hasn't had sex in three years. She has a brief, intense friendship with Samantha, a coworker. They take long walks at lunch and feed each other from paper sacks and spend every evening at Theresa's, legs over each other's laps, watching talk shows. Samantha is gone one day, fired, and it turns out she's been forging Theresa's signature on withdrawal papers.

Excerpted from Hot Springs Drive by Stephen Hunter. Copyright © 2023 by Stephen Hunter. Excerpted by permission of Roxane Gay Books. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.