After a splendid five days in New York, Giulio Manisetti and his newfound Italian friends saunter through the city streets. Giulio beams in the glory of his success in purchasing ships for the Italian Empire’s troops. He had stood in Mussolini’s presence before leaving, and his father, Commentadore Manisetti, has cabled Giulio and expressed his supreme pride. In the cable, he suggested that Giulio visit his brother, Alessandro, who founded a city in New Mexico with their family’s name. Giulio intends to do so, and once in his hotel, he sends a telegram to his brother and tells the hotel clerk to save him a room so he can stay there again in a few days’ time. Disgusted at the clerk’s indolent disinterest when Giulio tells him of his brother’s city and the Italian empire, Giulio leaves for the airfield to board a plane to Albuquerque. Once there, he notices a girl watching him and strikes up a conversation with her and her father about the city his brother has built for their glorious empire. When the girl and her father explain their dislike of the Italian campaign to him, Giulio acknowledges their feelings as calmly as possible and boards the plane, taking the flight in complete silence. While he indulges himself in thoughts of Italian superiority at first, the unbelievably long distance of the flight as it passes over America begins to disturb him.

When Giulio finally arrives in Albuquerque’s beautiful yet maddening desert, he books a ride to Manisetti with the detour office and stays in a hotel in Jemez Springs, where the proprietor asks him if he is related to Alessandro Manisetti. After Giulio answers yes, she diverts the conversation away from Alessandro and toward her pity for the soldiers of Italy, the center of art, being sent to fight in Africa. However, Giulio assures her Italy is simply fulfilling its destiny, to which the proprietor tells him every one of the Italian soldiers will be slaughtered. That night, Giulio ponders the hostility of the American people and why the proprietor refused to discuss Alessandro further. He tries to maintain faith in his brother’s success in the desert, which he wrote about in many letters, and the next day, the detour officer drives Giulio to Manisetti. When he first sees the city, he thinks it’s a Native American village due to its small size and meager resources. Once he steps into the post office, he meets Alessandro’s wife, Irma, who immediately embraces him. Though she’s very pleased to see him and introduces him to Alessandro’s children, Giulio is immediately repulsed by her. As he waits for his brother’s arrival, he hears a passing driver tell his passengers Manisetti is not a village but rather a trading post for the Navajo. Tired of waiting, he insists to Irma that he must find Alessandro today. Irma reluctantly explains that only Jesse Colton, the man who helped Alessandro build his house, can take Giulio to Alessandro’s mine, where he is likely working. Jesse Colton is summoned to the post office, and he and Giulio drive to Pueblo Bonito, the city closest to the mine.

At deserted Pueblo Bonito, only occupied by a team of archaeologists, Giulio takes a room in the Lodge. He pulls the archaeology team’s director aside and asks him if Alessandro really has a mine near here, and the director responds no. He tells him Alessandro has not taken well to the change from delusional and patriotic Italy to the harsh American desert. Hoping to save his brother from America in any case, Giulio thanks him and sets out for the “mine” with Colton in the morning. When they finally reach the makeshift shaft in the scorching cliffside, Giulio is nervous to see his brother again. Steeling himself, he ventures into the shaft and comes before Alessandro, swinging a pickax. He tells him he has come to see him, but Alessandro cries out for the visions of his brother to stop tormenting him. He thinks Giulio has appeared in spirit to punish him for his lies of his accomplishments in the desert, but Giulio embraces him to show that he is real. Alessandro slowly realizes his brother is there, and when Giulio tells him he wants to take Alessandro back to Italy, Alessandro exclaims that he has been blessed with a miracle.