A middle-aged Italian immigrant named Baldasare Forestiere arrives in Fresno, California from Sicily. He has brought only a cardboard suitcase and tools for digging into the seventy acres of uncultivable land he bought in hopes of growing his own vineyard. Undaunted by the unforgiving landscape, he digs for three months before his savings begin to dwindle, and then he hires himself out as a laborer for other farms. Depressed that his enterprise has only yielded a scraggly vegetable garden, he goes for a burger at the local drugstore, where he falls in love at first sight with the owner’s niece, Adriane Siagris. Determined now to win her hand, he moves into the spacious underground cellar he dug out and continues to dig out additional rooms, envisioning a below-ground mansion to live in with Adriane. For two years, he digs and hires himself out for labor, scrupulously saving every penny except for his weekly burger at the drugstore. In these years he notices that Adriane is fat, illiterate, and has blotchy skin, but he treasures her perceived faults anyway. One day, he invites her out to see his home, which has now expanded to twelve rooms. She insists that he hire a carriage to take them, and when they finally arrive, she is shocked and betrayed by the lack of a visible mansion. Baldasare tries to show her that the house is really underground, but she refuses to see it, and days later the paper announces her engagement to a local poultry heir. Baldasare believes that the engagement can be broken and is determined to win her back, even though she won’t speak to him. He digs a six-foot-deep heart in the lot behind the drugstore and refuses to stop even when the sheriff threatens him. It’s only when Adriane’s fiancé and his friend show up and beat him to unconsciousness that he stops. After Baldasare is released from the hospital, he is no longer obsessed with Adriane and instead sets his sights on a new vision of an underground garden with an Italian restaurant, gift shop, and more. Even with his injuries, he begins to dig.