The Bog Monster of Booker Creek by Wayne Miller - Free

In an extended letter to his son ten years in the future, John Densch chronicles how he and his family slid into a media circus, one in which a middle-school science project became a national joke. With the unexplained disappearance of a local girl, the joke takes an ominous turn. John finds himself in a cauldron of competing world-views, from the paranormal to the ultra-rational to the paranoid. As he waits for life to return to normal, he becomes more and more absorbed by the stories he tells himself, and realizes that he must finally acknowledge the tale that defines his life.