Cradle and All

In South Boston, sixteen-year-old Kathleen Beavier enters an abortion clinic called the Women's Medical Center. Kathleen is wealthy, preppy, and terrified: She is pregnant, yet she insists she has never had sexual intercourse. When she follows a voice down a hallway, she discovers her doctor hanging dead from a wall hook, her own name written on a notepad nearby. A deep, commanding Voice urges her to end her life. She slashes her wrists with a surgical blade and collapses unconscious.

Months later, Anne Fitzgerald, a private investigator in Boston and the novel's first-person narrator, receives a visit from Cardinal John Rooney of the Archdiocese of Boston. Rooney hires Anne for an urgent assignment and sends her to Los Angeles, where a devastating outbreak of a new, vaccine-resistant strain of polio is killing children at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. The same epidemic has struck Boston, and no one can explain its origin. Anne, a former Dominican nun who left her order, earned a master's in adolescent psychology from Harvard, and became a licensed private investigator, agrees to take the case.

One week earlier in Rome, Father Nicholas Rosetti, a thirty-six-year-old Vatican priest and the Church's chief investigator of miracles, meets privately with Pope Pius XIII. The pope reveals the long-hidden secret of Fatima: The Virgin Mary promised the world a divine child born to a virgin mother, and only this child can stop the plagues now sweeping the globe. As Rosetti leaves Vatican City, a mysterious attack strikes him with stabbing heart pains and blindness while a mocking Voice declares there is no God. He collapses in the street, surrounded by onlookers whose faces transform into snarling, wolflike creatures.

Kathleen, now eight months pregnant, lives at her family's estate, Sun Cottage, in Newport, Rhode Island. She survived her suicide attempt only because another patient arrived late at the clinic. Strange phenomena haunt her: Animals seem to watch and close in on her wherever she goes. Cardinal Rooney sends Anne to Newport to investigate Kathleen's claim of virgin pregnancy. Anne meets Kathleen's parents, Carolyn and Charles Beavier, who explain that after the suicide attempt, Kathleen claimed she was still a virgin, prompting involvement from doctors, Harvard theologians, and eventually Rome. When Kathleen appears, Anne finds her face reminiscent of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

In Maam Cross, a remote village in western Ireland, Rosetti interviews fourteen-year-old Colleen Deirdre Galaher, a second pregnant virgin, at the Holy Trinity School for Girls. Colleen is a pale, freckle-faced girl in tattered clothes, the same age as Mary of Nazareth when she bore Jesus. During the interview, the Voice attacks Rosetti again, flooding him with violent sexual desire toward Colleen. Horrified, he flees.

Back in Newport, Anne grows close to Kathleen. Dr. Neil Shapiro, a New York obstetrician brought in by the Church, examines Kathleen and confirms she is pregnant with her hymen fully intact. Anne confronts Jamie Jordan, a teenage boy who claims he slept with Kathleen, but she does not believe him. Cardinal Rooney sends Father Justin O'Carroll, an Irish priest, to the Beavier house. Anne and Justin share a complicated history: While Anne was a nun, they fell in love but never acted on their feelings, and their reunion rekindles deep emotions.

The cardinal holds a press conference at Sun Cottage, during which Kathleen claims to see the Blessed Virgin Mary among the trees. Pope Pius XIII dies, and a new pope, Benedict XVI, is elected. Kathleen's story spreads worldwide, drawing massive crowds. Meanwhile, Rosetti, who has survived a plane crash in Ireland that killed every other passenger, consults his former mentor, Monsignor Bernard Stingley, a biblical scholar whom the Church has forbidden from publishing. Stingley collapses during their meeting, screaming that devils surround them. Rosetti pieces together the full prophecy: Two virgins exist. One will bear the Son of God, and the other will bear the Son of Satan.

Events at Sun Cottage grow dangerous. Jamie Jordan dies in a car crash at Sachuest Point, a nearby headland tied to Kathleen's pregnancy. The Beaviers' housekeeper, Mrs. Walsh, attacks Kathleen with a knife, screaming that Satan is inside her. Anne shoots and kills Walsh to protect Kathleen. Rosetti then arrives and reveals his mission: to determine which virgin bears the holy child and which bears the Beast. The Vatican orders Kathleen moved for her safety. Anne and Justin travel to Ireland to meet Colleen, whose confirmed virginity mirrors Kathleen's, leaving Anne unable to distinguish between the two girls.

The group relocates to Europe. Rosetti takes Kathleen to Rome for intense spiritual testing, while Anne and Justin, alone in the French countryside, finally confess their love. Kathleen is brought to Salvatore Mundi Hospital in Rome, where hundreds of thousands gather to witness the birth. Meanwhile, Rosetti and Justin travel to Colleen's cottage in Ireland, where they discover Colleen's mother and Sister Katherine Dominica, the school's principal, dead inside the house. A local priest, Father Flannery, blocks the barn where Colleen hides, claiming the child is his. Rosetti fights past him and carries Colleen to safety.

Both babies are born nearly simultaneously. In Ireland, Rosetti delivers Colleen's son and discovers that Colleen was born intersex, with both male and female biological characteristics, and was originally christened Colin. Colleen's ovaries were surgically removed in infancy, making natural conception impossible. Rosetti carries the baby to a seaside cliff. When Justin follows and sees the infant's face, he witnesses thousands of eyes staring back: the legions of fallen angels. The child's features shift into something grotesque. Rosetti steps off the cliff with the infant, and both plunge into the Irish Sea.

In Rome, Kathleen gives birth to a healthy boy. During labor, she remembers what happened at Sachuest Point: Jamie Jordan and two friends assaulted her, resulting in pregnancy without penetration. The child is not divine but innocent and human. That night, Anne is attacked by apparitions but stands her ground, rejecting evil. She experiences a vision of the Virgin Mary, and when she wakes, she discovers she is pregnant and a virgin. She is the true mother promised at Fatima.

Justin, alive and safe, arrives in Rome and confirms that Rosetti identified Anne as the true virgin before his death. Justin leaves the priesthood and proposes to Anne, who accepts. Nine months later, at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, Anne gives birth to a girl named Noelle. In an epilogue set 18 years later, Noelle, now a university student in Maine, witnesses a fatal car accident and miraculously brings the dead family back to life. As Noelle walks home, she is watched by a young man with thousands of vengeful eyes: a boy who washed ashore from the Irish Sea 19 years earlier, bearing a cross-shaped mark on his forehead. The Beast has survived.