"Search" by Michelle Huneven

Michelle Huneven is the author of “Search,” a novel about a restaurant critic and a longtime member of the Unitarian Universalist church in Southern California who’s asked to join the church’s search committee for a new minister. That memoir follows the travails of the committee and their candidates—and becomes its own media sensation. The central figure in the novel had good material to work with: the committee is a wide-ranging mix of people, 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 choice between two very different paths. Although she may have been ambivalent about joining the committee, she 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.  Huneven, a former restaurant critic for the L.A. Times, said “Search,” her fifth novel, became her hardest writing challenge to date. She rewards readers with more than her prose, however. At book’s end, she includes some of the recipes the search committee enjoyed.