Churchgoer: a novel

A LitHub Most Anticipated Book of Summer Ahaunting debut literary noir about a former pastors 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 Hainess former life, he was an evangelical youth pastor, a role model, and a family manuntil he abandoned his wife, his daughter, and his beliefs.

Now hes 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 crashtwo 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, hes 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 downinto the seedier side of southern Californias 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 wont 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.