Countess Elizabeth Bathory of Hungary (1560-1613) was beautiful, well educated in the best traditions of the Renaissance, and wealthy beyond measure.

Upon assuming her seat of power at the age of sixteen, the Countess set out upon a course of revelry and debauchery, aided by her spiritual adviser, Darvulia, and by her faithful bevy of overwrought maids. Eventually, time and an excess of increasingly bizarre pleasures led the Countess to fear the loss of her beauty. She was advised by her witches to take baths in the blood of virgins to regenerate her body. A long procession of young girls were "chosen" to spend the night with Elizabeth.

Six hundred and fifty young women are said to have died in the Countess's castles.

Countess Elizabeth Bathory's direct descendant, Drake Bathory-Kereshtur, is a Hungarian emigre living in New York near the end of the twentieth century. He considers himself a failure at life. His relationships with women have been disasters. He is haunted by the Hungary of his youth, which he had to flee during the Hungarian revolution of 1956.

After the collapse of Communism, he returned to Hungary to find his youth, but found instead something a lot more horrifying: the pervasive presence of his ancestor, Countess Bathory. When he returns to the United States, he confesses to a hideous crime before a New York magistrate. This exquisite novel is told through Drake's eyes, as he searches for his roots and comes to terms with this gruesome part of his family history.