A heartbroken American writer starts a story about an ice-cold sombrero that falls inexplicably from the sky & lands in the centre of a small Southwest town. Devastated by the departure of his gorgeous Japanese girlfriend, he cannot concentrate on his writing & in frustration he throws away his beginning. But as the man searches through his apartment for strands of his lost love`s hair, the discarded story in the wastepaper basket
- through some kind of elaborate origami
- carries on without him. Arguments over the sombrero begin, one thing leads to another & before long all hell breaks loose in the normally sleep town. Brautigan`s fertile imagination twists & pulls at the ensuing chaos to come up with a tender, moving, surreal & incredibly funny tale that is told by a writer at the very peak of his creative powers.