The events concern a day when a major and unscrupulous televangelist (Brother Freddy) sees a scheduled appearance by Dale Evans go seriously wrong when an exotic Italian-looking fellow strolls on stage. He announces that he is Vanni Fucci (a character from Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy") and that "for the last seven hundred years I have lived in hell." (pg 72) Each Bolgia of Dante's Hell is allowed to send one of its inhabitants (Fucci was of the Seventh Bolgia of the Eighth Circle of Hell) back to Earth for a brief period of time, and Fucci happened to be chosen. Unlike most such returnees, he is not indulging in as many worldly pleasures as he can, however, but has returned in order to remedy a distressing problem. He recounts that Hell and even gods are created and uncreated by the strength of people's beliefs, and unfortunately Fucci was condemned to eternal suffering simply because he had gotten politically cross-wise of Dante and Dante's Hell was the most popular version (and so, the real one).