What happens when a group of very different people must agree on one person to lead their spiritual community? Search is a sharp, funny, and deeply human novel about faith, friendship, food, power, and the complicated process of making decisions together.
Dana Potowski is a restaurant critic, food writer, and longtime member of a progressive Unitarian Universalist congregation in Southern California. When the church needs a new minister, Dana joins the search committee and secretly decides to turn the experience into a memoir with recipes. But as the committee debates candidates, personalities clash, alliances form, and Dana finds herself becoming far more invested in the church's future than she expected.
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⛪ The Search for a Minister: At the center of the story is a Southern California Unitarian Universalist congregation searching for its next minister, bringing together a diverse group of people with very different ideas about what the church needs.
🔎 Dana's Secret Project: Dana joins the search committee partly because she sees an opportunity to write about the experience, secretly documenting the committee's meetings, personalities, arguments, and decisions.
🍽️ Food and Community: As a restaurant critic and food writer, Dana naturally views the world through food. Meals, potlucks, restaurants, and recipes become an important part of the story and its relationships.
😂 Witty and Observant: Huneven uses humor and sharp observations to explore the absurdities of committees, group dynamics, friendships, and the ways people behave when they believe they are doing the right thing.
💬 Clashing Personalities: The committee includes people from different generations and backgrounds, and their competing priorities create disagreements over what kind of minister the congregation should choose.
✝️ Faith and Spirituality: Dana's own history with seminary and her continuing spiritual questions give the novel a thoughtful exploration of belief, purpose, community, and the search for meaning.
🤝 The Challenge of Consensus: The novel examines how difficult it can be for intelligent, well-intentioned people to reach a unanimous decision when everyone brings their own experiences, values, and expectations to the table.
🌱 Searching Within: While the committee searches for a new minister, Dana finds herself confronting her own beliefs, relationships, ambitions, and understanding of what it means to belong.
Perfect for readers who enjoy:
📚 Literary fiction
⛪ Stories about faith and spirituality
🍽️ Food-centered fiction
😂 Witty and humorous novels
🔎 Character-driven mysteries of human behavior
🤝 Stories about community
💬 Complex interpersonal relationships
🧠 Thoughtful psychological fiction
🏡 Small-community stories
📖 Fiction with recipes
🌱 Personal and spiritual journeys
🎭 Ensemble casts and group dynamics
❤️ Stories about belonging and purpose
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