When his health starts to fail, Joshua Seigl, a celebrated, but reclusive author, must give up his independence. He hires Alma Busch as his assistant, a sensuous young woman with a troubled past and bizarre tattoos covering her body. Unaware that she is a virulent anti-Semite, Alma stirs in him a complex of emotions, and the two characters clash in a tragedy of thwarted erotic desire.