Gabriele Paterkallos, a young American poet of Greco-Italian descent, is visiting Rome to have his first poetry collection published as well to travel throughout Italy. During his Italian sojourn, he exchanges a series of letters with the self-exiled American novelist residing in Paris, Odysseus Pane, a few years his senior, and a bit more established within literary circles. The letters - Gabriele's private musings upon life, literature and beauty - are highly personal, yet still retain a unique universality about them. Indeed, many letters read as a passionate paean to Italy's timeless beauty redolent of a 19th century nobleman detailing the sights of his Italian Grand Tour.Gabriele is an arch-Romantic to the core positioning himself against the prevailing mores of the modern world. One seems to vacillate between intense feelings of revulsion, attraction, and even pity for Gabriele; not knowing whether to renounce him entirely or to fall deeply in love with him; and even those who have come to despise him find his broody, mysterious persona quite irresistible.