On her twelfth birthday, Sierva Maria - the only child of a decaying noble family in an eighteenth-century South American seaport - is bitten by a rabid dog. Believed to be possessed, she is brought to a convent for observation. And into her cell stumbles Father Cayetano Delaura, who has already dreamed about a girl with hair trailing after her like a bridal train. As he tends to her with holy water and sacramental oils, Delaura feels something shocking begin to occur. He has fallen in love - and it is not long until Sierva Maria joins him in his fevered misery. Unsettling and indelible, Of