To escape the Holocaust of Romania during World War II, a father secures from a mysterious stranger passage for his family out of Europe and across the Atlantic to America. To seal the agreement, the stranger scratches the desperate father with a raven's claw, and the father then learns that with the drawing of his blood, he has unwittingly acquired a debt, the cost of which is a fiendish curse on his family for generations to come.

In desperation, a father unknowingly makes a deal with a devil to save his family from the horrors of the Holocaust of Romania. With a mere slice of a raven's claw, the father's blood becomes the first payment of a debt to a mysterious stranger – a debt now owed and paid with the lives of the first-born daughters of all the father's male heirs for generations to come.

After learning of the horrifying curse following his family, and after suffering personal tragedies of his own, Nick White, the grandson of the man whose innocent desperation was the unfortunate catalyst for the suffering endured by Nick’s entire family, Nick enlists the aid of his aunt, an expert in mythology and folklore and fearless adventurer, to try to, somehow, shatter the dark magic that has held on to their family like an iron vice. In his quest, Nick is plunged into strange, mythic lands and comes face to face with figures whose mere existence had thus far been the stuff of stories. In the end, Nick must sacrifice all he holds dear and confront a creature, who, as his very name implies, is the deathless one.

Richard's interest in writing began in the 3rd grade when his teacher scattered on the floor loose dust jackets from various books. Richard's had a shark on the cover. Naturally, he freely adapted "Jaws," featuring his friends as the main characters. Since then, he has enjoyed a sustained interest in writing, in telling engaging stories with characters real enough to be the readers' best friends or their worst enemies. This is his first published work.