Our Lady of the Forest

Our Lady of the Forest is the story of a young seer and her apparitions of the Virgin Mary, set in a rain forest astride a damp, despairing logging town.

I found myself interested in apparitions of the Virgin Mary after reading about Gnosticism and its notion of the divine feminine, and then about the mass spectacles, with their associated hysteria, that accrue to apparitions at Lourdes and elsewhere.  Apparitions of the Virgin Mary have long attracted miracle seekers alongside church officials, skeptics, con artists, and true believers.  The phenomenon is ripe for storytelling.

This novel is, for me, both haunting and mysterious.  At its source is the second sentence of Catholicism's "Hail, Holy Queen" prayer:  To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve.  To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears.