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.
