A small town set at a crossroads in Missouri gets turned upside down when a traveling medicine show appears unexpectedly one day. Natalie, the daughter of the local mechanic, is fascinated, and also repelled, by the carnival-esque show and all the mechanical do-dads. But all kinds of weird things make Natalie think twice about the show-shadowy conversations, men with hypnotic and headache-causing eyes, and Natalie's strange new abilities to SEE things she shouldn't be able to know about. It's a fun, and slightly scary, steam punk story for preteens. I really enjoyed it, even though there were some parts that were slightly confusing. At some points it felt like the conclusion took too long to happen.