Our Lady of the Sign

A successful college professor in her thirties, Simone Stark has achieved everything she has strived for--everything other than happiness.

One winter day, in the face of unexpected news, Simone impulsively returns to her isolated hometown after a long absence. The snowy mountain landscape is meant to provide sanctuary, a sense of refuge, but instead awakens long-dormant desires and buried pain.

When Simone reunites with her first love, a tantalizing future opens. But in the darkness of Simone's childhood home, a series of unsettling encounters begins, revealing a presence that is both alluring and terrifying, a force she cannot decipher as good or evil, diabolic or divine. Is it a manifestation of her own inner demons or something far more real?

Torn by conflicting desires, Simone must face both a present choice and a past that won't stay hidden. As the power in the house grows stronger, the lines between reality and nightmare begin to blur, culminating in an encounter that will leave Simone forever changed.

Our Lady of the Sign is a haunting, evocative exploration of freedom and temptation, of fear and love, of the lies women tell and the lies women have been told. It is a spiritual and psychological thriller that maps the darkest terrain of a woman's soul--her capacity for reckless abandon and self-deception, but also for heroic love.

Abigail Favale, Ph.D., is a writer and professor in the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame. She writes across several genres, and her work has been translated into multiple languages. She is the author of The Genesis of Gender: A Christian Theory and Into the Deep: An Unlikely Catholic Conversion. She was awarded the J. F. Powers Prize for Short Fiction in 2017. Our Lady of the Sign is her debut novel.