SEARCH
Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic and food writer
and a longtime member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California.
Just as Dana is finishing the book tour for her latest bestseller, she is asked to join the church search committee for a new minister. Dana has doubts, but she is under pressure to find her next book idea, so she decides to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience. The memoir, Search, follows the travails of the search committee and their candidates—and becomes its own media sensation.
Dana had good material: the committee is a wide-ranging mix of congregants, and their candidates range from a microbrew master/pastor to a reverend who identifies as both a witch and an environmental warrior. Although she may have been ambivalent about joining the committee, Dana finds that she deeply cares about this institution, and she ends up in a battle royal over its fate.
In this loving, lacerating novel, Michelle Huneven thoughtfully explores how leadership and charisma work in our polarized age, how institutions and the people who belong to them shape our lives, and what it really means to seek and find a place of personal refuge in community.
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Praise for Search
“Readers will find Dana’s takes on committee microdramas, factions, and vagaries of church and friendship relatable. Food lovers will enjoy Dana’s restaurant visits and detailed food descriptions. The book’s finale is a collection of AUUC members’ signature recipes, a pleasing finish to this fresh work by award-winning novelist and food journalist Huneven.”
“Huneven shows her range with a folksy, funny fifth novel on the unlikely subject of how bad decisions happen to good committees. . . engaging and thought-provoking. The voting, the vetting, the drama, the discord, the anti-oppression training—it’s all here. . . tender, salty, and worthy of note.”
“I’ve loved every book Michelle Huneven has written and Search is the best—the most delectable—yet.”
“I was utterly charmed by Huneven’s characters, who reminded me of the best work of Tom Drury and, perhaps unsurprisingly, Laurie Colwin. But Huneven’s wit and wisdom are all her own. Search is a sumptuous novel, well worth savoring.”