Our Lady of the Sign by Abigail Favale | Ignatius, 2026 | 224 pages | $17.95

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can talk you out of it?” The gas station attendant’s question comes at Simone’s last stop on her journey back to the remote farmhouse she hasn’t seen in 16 years. The query is about buying cigarettes; the house is now a vacation rental; and she’s woefully unprepared for the snow and the cold of December in rural Idaho. But Simone sets off, cigarettes in hand, to spend three weeks alone with her thoughts and a secret plan.

That’s the setup for a thriller—or a ghost story or Gothic novel—and Abigail Favale’s debut novel, Our Lady of the Sign, is those things and more. She deftly weaves threads of multiple genres into a story that surprises and unsettles, constantly veering from the reader’s expectations. Like all such stories, it’s about evil and the wages of sin. But, in a twist that makes the book a worthy addition to the novel of the supernatural, Simone’s sins are distinctly female, and so is the evil they call forth.

Like the protagonist of a Hitchcock film, Simone is neither innocent nor entirely likeable. Thirty-three, independent, dedicated to her career and, perhaps, to her live-in boyfriend, she’s determined to make decisions about her future without reference to anyone but herself. The empty house draws her back to choose her life’s direction in chilly seclusion, surrounded by memories merely papered over for renters.

Strange occurrences begin—cold blasts of air, doors opening and closing, terrible dreams… but wonderful things, too. Perhaps, she was wrong to leave. Perhaps, a new and better future awaits than the one she’s come to ensure. As Simone returns to old temptations and sins, events in the house escalate, and her dreams come to focus on a woman, a mother alternately beautiful and terrible. Simone seeks answers from friends and strangers and, finally, the local parish.

Simone’s actions aren’t always moral, and her perceptions are often skewed. But are they her own inclinations, or is she being influenced by forces, perhaps even beings, that the single mother who raised her “to hold her own in a material world” left her blind to? If the woman she’s seeing isn’t Mary, who is it? If she doesn’t believe in God, will He help her? If her life is suddenly full of evil signs, where are signs of the good?

In a terrifying finale, Simone faces off against whatever or whoever is in the house with a bottle of holy water and a vial of blessed salt. She’s as unprepared to deal with her sin as she was to face the bleak winter. But glories as well as horrors lie beyond the veil of what we can see, a female face for love as well as one for death, and only by accepting both can Simone understand, forgive, truly choose her future, and take the first steps on her journey to God. Abigail Favale’s gripping debut novel will hold your attention to the very last paragraph and is a worthy addition to the literature of the uncanny.

Gail Deibler Finke is an author, freelance writer, and producer of “Driving Home the Faith” for Sacred Heart Radio.