When Richard Scott Larson was twelve going on thirteen, he started having a recurring nightmare of travelling a hallway full of dangerous, distorted characters toward a door slightly ajar, with someone hidden just behind it in the shadows. To anyone versed in dream language, The Long Hallway will be discomfitingly familiar, yet it is impossible to prepare for the way that Larson describes, in this vivid and cinematic memoir debut, the summer that defined his life.