The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova - #3

A wonderul novel that transports the reader to far off places and times. It is 1972 and a young woman finds some old yellow papers in her father's librabry. She begins to read them at once and realizes that her father has a major secret. She convinces her father to take her on a trip where he begins to tell her the horrifying tale. It seems that it all started with his mentor, Professor Rossi, and a book he found while he was a student at Oxford. The book contained only one thing, an image of a dragon holding a banner that says Drakyla. Soon the horrifying tale of horrors thought to be made up is unfolded. It seems that Dracula, Vlad Tepes, is alive and well somewhere in Eastern Europe and the father, Paul, had tried to track him down to find his kidnapped mentor. Soon Paul disappears and the young woman is on her own mission to find someone she loves. However, there are people who will stop at nothing to keep the secrets of Vlad Tepes and want to stop Paul and his daughter before all is revealed.

This was a wonderful book. While on the surface it seems to be about Dracula there is actually a much deeper story being told. It is a story of lose and longing. Kostova descripes in amazing detail some exotic and far off places - Istanbul, Hungary, France and Bulgaria. Many people may feel that she could have left a lot of detail out and made the book shorter but I think it adds to the richness of the story. I highly recommend this novel and please do not let the fact that it is 600-plus pages detour you - it is well worth the time invested.