Josef Steinmetz is an immigrant brimming with youthful optimism but short on practicality. Earl Shank is a small-town postmaster whose own optimism is bruised but not yet broken. When fate delivers Josef like an errant letter into Earl's hands, their lives become the stuff of legend.

In the wake of the Civil War, Josef moves from Brooklyn to tiny Figulus, Florida, intent on homesteading in the tradition of America's pioneers. Shortly thereafter, having lost his wife, his house, his orchard, and a brand-new pair of loafers, he goes to work for Earl, walking the beaches barefoot to deliver the mail.

Doggedly, Josef overcomes blistering heat, ferocious animals, beachcombing pirates, and an analytical group of Seminole Indians, only to accidentally disappear into the mists of a New York journalist's imagination.

It is Earl, a would-be restaurateur with a definite flair for publicity, who manages to parlay Josef's struggles into the beginnings of Florida's tourist industry - with the help of an embittered Civil War veteran, a shipping magnate who believes in mermaids, and a Seminole woman whose agenda for Florida is exactly the opposite of Earl's. And it is only when Earl's ship literally comes in that he discovers how inconvenient it can be for a legend to come to life.