The Used World: A Novel

“An enthralling, exquisitely nuanced tale” (New York Newsday) about the power of family, history, and spirituality, and the many meanings of the place we call home from the New York Times bestselling author of A Girl Named Zippy.

Sixty-something Hazel Hunnicutt is the owner of the sprawling antique store Used World Emporium and is increasingly attached to her two employees: Claudia Modjeski—freakishly tall, forty-odd years old—who might finally be undone by the extreme loneliness that’s dogged her all of her life; and Rebekah Shook, pushing thirty, still living in her fervently religious father’s home, and carrying the child of the man who recently broke her heart. The three women struggle—separately and together, through relationships, religion, and work—to find their place in this world. And it turns out that they are bound to each other not only by the past but also by the future, as not one but two babies enter their lives, turning their formerly used world brand-new again.

Astonishing for what it reveals about the human capacity for both grace and mischief, The Used World forms a loose trilogy with Haven Kimmel’s two previous novels, The Solace of Leaving Early and Something Rising (Light and Swift). This is a book about all of America by way of a single midwestern town called Jonah, and the actual breathing histories going on as Indiana’s stark landscape is transformed by dying small-town centers and proliferating big-box stores and SUVs. It’s about generations of deception, anguish, and love, and the idiosyncratic ways spirituality plays out in individual lives. “This magical, marvelous novel shines with wisdom, wit, and wonder” (Library Journal, starred review).