Jamesland by Michelle Huneven

An earlier novel by the author of Search.

As I read Search, I began to remember that when I left the Long Beach church, back in June, 2020, a member of the church who owned a used bookstore had given me a paperback book as a going away present and told me I might be interested in it because one of the main characters was a Unitarian Universalist minister. When I learned more about Michelle Huneven, I wondered whether the novel the church member had given me, still sitting on my bookshelf unread, might be her earlier novel . It was. So I finally read it.

Jamesland takes place in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles. I used to live in Silver Lake which is the neighborhood next door to the east. Alice Black is living in her grandmother’s house. The elderly grandmother is living at a nearby nursing home. The book is called Jamesland because Alice and her grandmother are descendants of William James, the famed American philosopher, theologian, and proto-psychologist, who wrote Varieties of Religious Experience. Alice’s grandmother has been working for decades on writing a biography of James in the form of a novel.

The Unitarian Universalist minister is Helen Harland. She serves a fictional church in the Los Feliz area. She’s a new, younger, minister, replacing an older, beloved minister, and trying unsuccessfully to get her congregation to embrace a new style and new programs. Helen meets Alice at a time when Alice is navigating the end of a complicated romantic relationship, when she’s experiencing a series of unsettling visions, and when she’s struggling to take care of her aging grandmother. Alice appreciates Helen’s practical spiritual guidance. Helen is looking for a friend outside her congregation. The two become friends.

The other major character is Pete Ross. He lives with his mother, working to get his life back together after a divorce, and a suicide attempt. Helen Harland knows Pete and his mother because they work together at a soup kitchen.

The novel circles around the three major characters, Alice, Helen, and Pete, as their lives come undone and get put back together. Each of them learns and grows. The settings around Los Feliz, including a homeless encampment beside the LA river, and the houses that back-up to Griffith Park were all familiar to me. The plot is sufficiently complex and surprising. The resolution satisfying. It’s always gratifying to read a novel where religion is taken seriously and even sweeter to have the job of a minister presented realistically, including both its challenges and gifts.