Collodi, an elegant writer on vacation in a Tuscan village in the late nineteenth century, is pressed by his publisher to write a new fable as soon as possible. But Collodi is in full creative crisis and moreover he needs to repair his desk, so he turns to a skilled carpenter, Geppo, a man still tried by having lost his wife in childbirth. Empathy for this man and the poster of a puppet theater are the elements from which the new inspiration of the writer comes, who finally starts a new novel.