All the characters in the novel contend with the various legacies left behind by Vlad Dracula: Both the narrator and her mother are blood descendants of the Prince of Wallachia. Dr. Rossi, Paul’s mentor, eventually becomes like him, in more ways than merely physical. Thus, Paul’s life is irrevocably linked to the vampire; Dracula inhabits his family and destroys his mentor. The book itself is concerned with successors and subsequent generations: Dr. Rossi’s letters describe events from the 1930s, while Paul’s letters reveal the fruitless chase for Dracula’s tomb in the 1950s. The narrator frames all of this from the perspective of her teenaged self, in the 1970s. Each successive generation becomes entangled in the legend, and implicated in the crimes, of Dracula in this way. Writing 36 years later, the narrator has again confronted the possibility that her undead ancestor still lives.

Dr. Rossi addresses the narrator’s father, Paul, in his first letter, as, “My dear and unfortunate successor,” which Paul’s daughter reads, in secret, some 40 years later (55). This eventually opens the door for Paul to tell the narrator his story, an unbelievable tale of supernatural forces and appalling cruelty; this inevitably becomes her story.