Mysterious ways - Jennifer Chapman

Mysterious Ways is an intriguing novel about the power of one girl - 'a strange, pale half-person' - over the men and women whose lives she touches.

Gail Dodkin learns from a very early age that nothing on an ordinary human level touches her - certainly not losing her virginity under the railway viaduct at the age of thirteen, or the fury of her own family when she decides to become a nun, nor even the despair of her dead fiancé's parents. Only the religious ecstasy of her first mass brings her emotions to life. But in the convent her Mother Superior soon becomes disturbed by Gail's influence on the enclosed female community. She sends Gail to live with her own niece who runs a hotel in the south of England.

And so it is that Antonia Laraby and her second husband, Stephen, find their strained marriage extended into an unnatural triangle as each becomes obsessed by the enigmatic newcomer - 'the little nun' - whose influence is even felt on their desperate attempt at a second honeymoon in Venice. While May, the unhappy child of Antonia's first marriage, is also drawn towards Gail in hero-worship of a degree which throws her young life off balance.

Jennifer Chapman breathes a strange, chilling life into the character of Gail Dodkin - a compelling study in the insidious power of evil.