Hunters and Gatherers A Novel

The New York Times–bestselling author takes on New Agers as one woman searches for meaning in this “brilliantly satiric but . . . sweet-natured” novel (Publishers Weekly).
 
Thirty-year-old Martha is stagnating in a demeaning, woefully underpaid job as a fact-checker at frothy fashion magazine Mode and an unhappy relationship with an unrepentant jerk. But she stumbles upon an unlikely new circle of friends when she interrupts a goddess-worshipping ceremony on Fire Island and ends up rescuing its accident-prone leader, Isis Moonwagon, from the waves.
 
From the steel skyscrapers of Manhattan to a sweat lodge in the Arizona desert, Martha chases fulfillment and self-actualization in the company of this group of opinionated, bumbling women, but the revelations she receives are not necessarily what she expected.
 
“Prose’s satiric vision could not be more sharply focused here, and her powers of observation and deadpan humor never falter” as she sends up the New Age movement and its over-earnest adherents (The Miami Herald).

Francine Prose is the author of sixteen novels, including A Changed Man, winner of the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and Blue Angel, a finalist for the National Book Award. Her most recent works of nonfiction include the highly acclaimed Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, and the New York Times bestseller Reading Like a Writer. A former president of PEN American Center and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Prose is a highly regarded critic and essayist, and has taught literature and writing for more than twenty years at major universities. She is a distinguished writer in residence at Bard College, and she lives in New York City.