Growing up on the north west coast of Italy in the mid fifteenth century, a boy is at last able to trace his own history after leaving his idyllic secluded village. Traveling to Lucca, Pisa and on to Genoa, he meets and befriends a number of people who pass on to him advice as he tries to wrestle with the dilemmas that many teenagers feel as they try to establish their own identity in the world. While he continues to search for his kidnapped mother, he comes across a strange handwritten book full of calligraphy written in a strange language. Little by little he gains some understanding of the contents but struggles to come to terms with why parts of it seem strangely familiar. The riddle of The Perchè-No Manifesto is eventually solved and many of his questions are answered by the time he returns to his village, no longer a child but a man with a purpose.