“Delectable. . . Huneven treats us to a savory plot that blends spiritual yearnings with earthly pleasures. Forks out!” —Oprah Daily
From critically acclaimed, award-winning author Michelle Huneven, a sharp and funny novel of a congregational search committee, told as a memoir with recipes
Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic and food writer and a longtime member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California. Just as she’s finishing the book tour for her latest bestseller, Dana is asked to join the church search committee for a new minister. Under pressure to find her next book idea, she agrees, and resolves to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience. That memoir, Search, follows the travails of the committee and their candidates—and becomes its own media sensation.
Dana had good material to work with: the committee is a wide-ranging mix of Unitarian Universalist congregants, and their candidates range from a baker and microbrew master/pastor to a reverend who identifies as both a witch and an environmental warrior. Ultimately, the committee faces a stark choice between two very different paths forward for the congregation. Although she may have been ambivalent about joining the committee, Dana finds that she cares deeply about the fate of this institution and she will fight the entire committee, if necessary, to win the day for her side.
This wry and wise tale will speak to anyone who has ever gone searching, and James Beard Award–winning author Michelle Huneven’s food writing and recipes add flavor to the delightful journey.
Genre: Literary Fiction
From critically acclaimed, award-winning author Michelle Huneven, a sharp and funny novel of a congregational search committee, told as a memoir with recipes
Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic and food writer and a longtime member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California. Just as she’s finishing the book tour for her latest bestseller, Dana is asked to join the church search committee for a new minister. Under pressure to find her next book idea, she agrees, and resolves to secretly pen a memoir, with recipes, about the experience. That memoir, Search, follows the travails of the committee and their candidates—and becomes its own media sensation.
Dana had good material to work with: the committee is a wide-ranging mix of Unitarian Universalist congregants, and their candidates range from a baker and microbrew master/pastor to a reverend who identifies as both a witch and an environmental warrior. Ultimately, the committee faces a stark choice between two very different paths forward for the congregation. Although she may have been ambivalent about joining the committee, Dana finds that she cares deeply about the fate of this institution and she will fight the entire committee, if necessary, to win the day for her side.
This wry and wise tale will speak to anyone who has ever gone searching, and James Beard Award–winning author Michelle Huneven’s food writing and recipes add flavor to the delightful journey.
Genre: Literary Fiction
Praise for this book
"The committee at the heart of Huneven's wonderful Search is a portrait of a community working toward that most elusive of goals--a unanimous decision. The alliances and betrayals along the way reveal that even when a group of people share a common passion, the path to consensus can be tortuous. Fortunately, in Huneven's masterful prose it is also insightful, revealing, and very funny." - Jessica Francis Kane
"It's rare to find a writer as gimlet-eyed and big-hearted as Michelle Huneven, whose gorgeous novels display an unsentimental compassion that sits in delicious counterpoint to their gentle insistence on the truth. The wondrous Search tells the story of a group of people whose task is to unify around an important decision, and if that sounds possible, rest assured that this droll novel will demonstrate in hilarious and painful detail all the ways in which our best intentions run afoul of how powerfully we want what we want. It's a marvelous novel and it has recipes: in other words, it's irresistible." - Ann Packer
"I've loved every book Michelle Huneven has written and Search is the best--the most delectable--yet." - Ruth Reichl
"Michelle Huneven's Search is immersive, inviting, occasionally wry, and often warm. It's a front row seat to a juicy in-fight that's all too familiar to anyone who's ever tried to get something done by committee. Huneven generously portrays the emotional questing that brings people into spiritual communities while also chronicling the rivalry, pettiness, and basic human failings that manifest in those communities. The narrator of Search reflects that ministry--especially for the secular--is about asking, 'How do we live in this world?', and this novel suggests many possible answers, as it touches on friendships, food, charisma, gossip, the notion of home, and the challenge of making all those things meaningful." - Sanjena Sathian
"Michelle Huneven writes with the clarity of both warmth and wit. She knows, and cherishes, the absurdity of the human spirit. And there are recipes!" - Cathleen Schine
"In Search, Michelle Huneven invents the novel-with-recipes and takes on the eternal committee. With wry humor and keen moral nerve, she brings us deep into a group formed not by affinity but with a purpose--to select a new leader. We follow the hilarious, absorbing, shocking step by step of how and why intelligent, good-minded people make an entirely surprising decision. With echoes of voices as disparate as those of Thomas McGuane and Barbara Pym, Huneven is an American original, attentive to the outscale beauties of the west and the fragility of its citizens and institutions." - Mona Simpson
"It's rare to find a writer as gimlet-eyed and big-hearted as Michelle Huneven, whose gorgeous novels display an unsentimental compassion that sits in delicious counterpoint to their gentle insistence on the truth. The wondrous Search tells the story of a group of people whose task is to unify around an important decision, and if that sounds possible, rest assured that this droll novel will demonstrate in hilarious and painful detail all the ways in which our best intentions run afoul of how powerfully we want what we want. It's a marvelous novel and it has recipes: in other words, it's irresistible." - Ann Packer
"I've loved every book Michelle Huneven has written and Search is the best--the most delectable--yet." - Ruth Reichl
"Michelle Huneven's Search is immersive, inviting, occasionally wry, and often warm. It's a front row seat to a juicy in-fight that's all too familiar to anyone who's ever tried to get something done by committee. Huneven generously portrays the emotional questing that brings people into spiritual communities while also chronicling the rivalry, pettiness, and basic human failings that manifest in those communities. The narrator of Search reflects that ministry--especially for the secular--is about asking, 'How do we live in this world?', and this novel suggests many possible answers, as it touches on friendships, food, charisma, gossip, the notion of home, and the challenge of making all those things meaningful." - Sanjena Sathian
"Michelle Huneven writes with the clarity of both warmth and wit. She knows, and cherishes, the absurdity of the human spirit. And there are recipes!" - Cathleen Schine
"In Search, Michelle Huneven invents the novel-with-recipes and takes on the eternal committee. With wry humor and keen moral nerve, she brings us deep into a group formed not by affinity but with a purpose--to select a new leader. We follow the hilarious, absorbing, shocking step by step of how and why intelligent, good-minded people make an entirely surprising decision. With echoes of voices as disparate as those of Thomas McGuane and Barbara Pym, Huneven is an American original, attentive to the outscale beauties of the west and the fragility of its citizens and institutions." - Mona Simpson
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