Janis Cordelia Plumtree has killed the King of the West--or at least one of the personalities in her head has killed him, and the other personalities are resolved to restore the king to life. But first Plumtree must escape from a mental hospital with ally Sid Cochran, a winemaker who believes that his wife was killed by Dionysus, the Greek god of madness and wine.

Their quest for redemption and vengeance leads them to San Francisco, where they find themselves in the midst of a supernatural battle among several magicians-who-would-be-king, and finally to a tumultuous face-to-face confrontation with the god on the cliffs below the Golden Gate Bridge.