A cash-strapped ghostwriter pursues his glamorous celebrity client from the American Southwest to southern Italy in a quest for money and meaning.
With his cache of emergency living funds dwindling rapidly, and the dreaded prospect of returning to his job of teaching writing to college freshmen looming on the horizon, Paul Meadows agrees to ghostwrite the life story of “difficult” young Italian actress, Penelope Addio. The first difficulty is finding her as she leads him on an adventurous romp through the ancient colonies of southern Italy’s il Mezzogiorno, "Land of the Midday Sun."
Surprised to suddenly find himself in the ancestral village of his maternal grandparents, who migrated to the United States at the beginning of the 20th Century, the struggling ghostwriter discovers that he is a full-fledged son of Italy rather than the half-Italian his mother led him to believe he was. While reeling from this staggering revelation, Meadows meets and falls for another Italian actress, the elusive Stefania Panelli, who, forced to choose between two passions, can’t decide which she loves more, her native Italy or the American ghostwriter.