College hadn’t worked out for Yeller: He had not even learned to drink well. By spring, his second sophomore year at Eastern Washington University, Yeller was an Eagle and a fairly lost bird.

Before February, we tended to equate silence with peace: camping trips, romantic walks, skies full of starlight. They are instances absent the daily transitory noise to which we have become accustomed, but they are far from silent. They fill our ears eventually with the foundational, permanent music of the Earth turning. These instances were voluntary, sought out even. Our recent silence is imposed upon us. We escape it with TV reruns, news sources we agree with, Uber Eats and books we’ve already read – music requiring no thought, only recognition of the first few bars.

In week 3 of Summer Stories: The Road Trip, Washington Book Award winner Bruce Holbert takes a drive with a man and his dogs.

There’s violence in his latest book, “Whiskey,” which comes out Tuesday from Farrar Straus Giroux. But in his mind, it’s violence of a different variety.

Do you recall a special teacher in your life? Bruce and Holly Holbert's book features essays from famous people (many of them local) about the teacher's that inspired them.

Bruce and Holly Holbert revise and expand their collection of teacher appreciation essays into a new book, “Thank You, Teacher.”

Two Spokane writers, Bruce Holbert and Tod Marshall, are awarded Washington State Book Awards.

Six East Side writers – four of them from Spokane – are finalists for the Washington State Book Awards, the Washington Center for the Book announced on Friday. The Spokane nominees are Bruce Holbert , Tod Marshall , Mary Cronk Farrell and Greg Gordon . Joining them are Moses Lake native Heather Brittain Bergstrom , who now lives in California, and Richland writer Maureen McQuerry .

Breakfast: a half dozen scrambled eggs, fried salami, a glass of chocolate milk; and one trip to the toilet until his hand steadies. The half-open window bleeds light onto the floor, but the breeze today comes from the mountain, not the city; it smells clean which provides relief. Today is Labor Day and Clarence Darrow Culnane has a job on a register at The Dollar Store, part-time, but with a promise that if he worked out it would turn more. Outside, the day is pleasantly warm, mitigated by the breeze. Gulls squawk and scoop the pavement and garbage bins for scraps at Dick’s, an outdoor hamburger joint. The cityscape pitches with the river valley’s topography. Beneath his window three rap wannabes attempt to rhyme alligator with tomato, but he no longer alternates nights on others’ sofas; it is his window.

This past spring, Mt. Spokane High School English teacher Bruce Holbert published his first novel, “Lonesome Animals,” with Counterpoint Press. Since then, the Western detective story has garnered good reviews from readers at amazon.com and critics at papers such as the Oregonian and Seattle Times, drawing comparisons to Larry McMurtry and Cormac McCarthy. Times critic Adam Woog called it “a brilliant and utterly compelling debut.” The book is getting some end of the year love, too. Woog put “Lonesome Animals” on his list of the year’s best mysteries, along with Dennis Lehane’s “Live by Night” and Peter Robinson’s “Before the Poison.”