This Body, This Blood - Paperback

by Daphne A. Vermeer (Author)

This Body, This Blood is a literary vampire novel set in the Netherlands in the autumn of 2023.

Anna never wanted to be a vampire. After seven years in hiding, she is finally safe-but safety isn't the same as having a life.

When she visits her prospective friend Henk and his blood father Aloïsius at their isolated house in the Dutch forest, she finds herself confronted with unsettling truths about life on the edge of moral catastrophe.

What disturbs Anna most is Aloïsius himself: a practicing Catholic who seeks God's grace while living as a serial killer, openly admitting he exists in "a state of mortal sin." And Henk, who lost his faith decades ago, seems content remaining for nearly a century with the man who murdered him. The longer she stays, the less she understands the household around her, or herself.

This is not a novel about vampires as metaphor. The horror is not in what they are. It is in the quiet, ordinary life of wood-chopping, budgeted supermarket trips, and chamomile tea brewed on the fire because there is no electricity, against the ever-present knowledge of what they have done - and what they may have to do again.

Grounded in Dutch landscape, culture, and the everyday impact of the Protestant/Catholic divide, This Body, This Blood is a novel about sin, survival, and what we make of the lives we never chose.