"While the specific characters and events are creations of my imagination, I have based the serial killer on a real person, Willie Pinkton, and ... have drawn from real events in Pinkton's life to ground my narrative. ... I have also drawn from real events in creating my victims." -- Author's note (page [357]).

Marina Salles's life does not end the day she wakes up dead. Instead she is transformed into the stuff of myth, the stuff of her grandmother's old Filipino stories: an aswang. She spent her life on the margins, knowing very little about her own life, let alone the lives of others, Death brings her into the hearts and minds of those she has known-- even her killer-- as she is able to access their memories and to see anew the meaning of her own. -- adapted from jacket