In the 16th century an Aztec priest has cut off his own hand and used the bloody stump to lay a curse upon a blasphemous Spanish conquistador and all his direct descendants.

The curse: that once any of the descendants, whether male or female, have tasted physical love, even in the form of a single kiss, they will spend the rest of their lives as being nearly sexually insatiable.

Time magazine said: Disciples are the undoing of holy men, and so it is with Richard Condon, a talented and satirical fantast whose fiercely proselytizing followers regard him as the fifth hoarse man of the Apocalypse.

"[2]The New York Times was more favorable: One could go on about Richard Condon's surrealist story lines, his laugh-out-loud satiric wit, and his inordinate ability to invent outlandish detail.

Since this is a novel by Richard Condon, it all ends with brilliantly eccentric symmetry as a war party of savage Injuns dash out to rescue the whites from a massacre by the cavalry.