Michelle Huneven on Search: A Novel: Fiction

Michelle Huneven is the author of four previous novels: Round Rock, Jamesland, Blame, and Off Course. She is the recipient of a Whiting Award for fiction and a James Beard Award for feature writing with recipes. In Search: A Novel (Penguin Press) Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic, food writer, and a long-time member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California. Just as she’s finishing the book tour for her latest bestseller, she joins 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. As Huneven’s Search follows Dana, Dana’s memoir, Search, follows the travails of the committee and the candidates and becomes a media sensation. Dana had good material to work with: The candidates range from a baker and microbrew master/pastor to a reverend who identifies as both a witch and an environmental warrior. The committee ultimately faces a stark choice between two very different paths forward for the congregation. And though she was once ambivalent about joining the committee, Dana finds that she cares deeply about the congregation than she ever realized and will fight, if necessary, to win the day.

Ron Charles writes about books for The Washington Post.