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The Churchgoer

A Novel

ebook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

Soon to be a an FX series starring and produced by Matthew McConaughey

A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of Summer

"The Churchgoer is a wonderful debut novel from a writer with more than a few tricks up his sleeve.”—Los Angeles Times

A haunting debut literary noir about a former pastor’s search to find a missing woman in the toxic, contradictory underbelly of southern California.

“He was finished with church, with God, with all of it. But to find the girl, he has to go back.”

In Mark Haines’s former life, he was an evangelical youth pastor, a role model, and a family man—until he abandoned his wife, his daughter, and his beliefs. Now he’s marking time between sunny days surfing and dark nights working security at an industrial complex. His isolation is broken when Cindy, a charming twenty-two-year old drifter he sees hitchhiking on the Pacific Coast Highway, hustles him for a breakfast and a place to crash—two cynical kindred spirits.

Then his co-worker is murdered in a robbery gone wrong and Cindy disappears on the same night. Haines knows he should let it go and return to his safe life of solitude. Instead, he’s driven to find out where Cindy went, under stranger and stranger circumstances. Soon Mark is chasing leads, each one taking him back into a world where his old life came crashing down—into the seedier side of southern California’s drug trade and ultimately into the secrets of an Evangelical megachurch where his past and his future are about to converge. What begins as an investigation becomes a haunting mystery and a psychological journey both for Mark, and for the elusive young stranger he won’t let get away.

Set in the early 2000s, The Churchgoer is a gripping noir, a quiet subversion of the genre, and a powerful meditation on belief, morality, and the nature of evil in contemporary life.

 
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      May 6, 2019
      Mark Haines, the tortured narrator of Coleman’s provocative debut novel, suffered an emotional breakdown after his sister’s suicide. He left his position as youth minister at a fundamentalist church, took to drink, and alienated his family. He now leads a solitary life in Southern California, where he surfs during the day and works nights as a security guard at an industrial complex. Prone to tirades against religion, he also quotes the poet Philip Larkin. When Cindy Liu, an apparently vulnerable and desperate young woman he meets by chance, disappears around the same time a fellow guard is murdered, Haines intuits that a mob of drug and pornography dealers, run by evil, hypocritical Christians, must be to blame. Roused into impulsive, clumsy action, he sets out to find Cindy and his colleague’s killer. Persons of faith will likely feel uncomfortable in Haines’s company. Others, including those who admire Coleman’s poetry collection, Fire Season, will sympathize as his protagonist struggles to achieve some peace of mind. Most readers will be curious to see what the author does next. Agent: Tim Wojcik, Levine Greenberg Rostan.

    • Booklist

      May 1, 2019
      A debut novel set in the early 2000s, this is California noir with a twist. Mark Haines surfs the waves rather than walking the mean streets, or, in this instance, the Pacific Coast Highway, although it does all start with a hitchhiker. Haines was once an evangelical youth pastor but has rejected his past and abandoned the family he describes as more like a postwar ruin than anything you'd put your faith in. He takes in Cindy, a woebegone drifter, and they coexist for a while in the depths of their cynicism; then she disappears on the same night that Haines' coworker is killed in a robbery gone wrong. To find Cindy, he must revisit the megachurch world of his past and trample the turf of the SoCal drug trade. Suggest this somewhat one-note noir to anyone who finds poetry in dark-journey narratives. As Bob Dylan puts it, When you ain't got nothin', you got nothin' to lose. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

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Languages

  • English

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