Universal Harvester (2017) by John Darnielle

“They wouldn’t be there forever, the old buildings.”

Readers unfamiliar with Universal Harvester may prefer to read these notes only after reading the novel.

Universal Harvester follows several lives in small-town Iowa between 1972 and 1999. 

What happens when a mother and wife walks out on weekly Bible study and starts attending an out of town store-front church? A church whose itinerant flock and leader travel back and forth across the U.S. in the early 1970s, promoting the Christian worship of dirt and thrown-away food as Eucharistic concreteness? 

[....] “Think about the worker in the field,” he said, impossibly slowing his rhythm even further, not raising his voice but speaking as if to a friend across a table in a diner late at night. “Think about that worker in the field at midday. How he looks out there after half a day’s work, when the hour comes. Sweating. Sunburned. There’s a reason why Luke wants us to see this worker in the field, why Matthew says you don’t go back for your clothes. It’s not just that God doesn’t mind if you’re dirty,” he said....