Down to the Soul - Paperback

After her boyfriend attacks her in Madrid, Esmi, a young computer programmer, seeks refuge with her grandparents in their remote village in Extremadura, Spain. The war-scarred village is a tangle of secrets, and Esmi becomes entwined in her family's tortured history.

"The wind coursed through the nearly deserted village, scouring the town with its own dust. Black dresses and black stockings flapped on clotheslines, and at the village's heart, the empty plaza hunkered down around a graceless fountain--bone-dry and bullet-pocked."

On her first night, unable to sleep, Esmi dismisses the villagers' warnings of dangers both earthly and supernatural and wanders into the town's cramped, dusty plaza. There by the fountain, bullet-scarred from the Spanish Civil War, she meets and is drawn to a mysterious stranger, Iban. In the following days Esmi's grandfather, struggling with his own demons from the war, grows increasingly hostile towards Esmi. Alone and friendless, she turns to Iban for solace, but when one of the villagers is found dead, the superstitious housekeeper warns Esmi that the death is unnatural--the act of a vampire--and she accuses Iban. Esmi must decide what to believe and whom to trust. Her life depends on it.