It's 1934 and the Depression has hit the Arkansas Ozarks hard. Isaac is broke and about to lose his barbershop, so he doesn't care that a carnival is in town. In fact, since his wife died, he hasn't cared about anything. But dang it all, sideshow freaks are turning up butchered, and when Isaac isn't cutting hair, he is also the sheriff.The whole darn town is riding his back about these murders. Soon Isaac is squeezed between the secretive world of the carnies, who don't trust him, and the local citizens, who think freaks would be better off if they'd never been born. The citizens demand protection, and this part-time sheriff seems more incompetent every day.Probably the best thing would be simply to walk away from his problems. Shoveling horse manure on his brother's ranch in Texas would seem like a step up in the world.But what about the single mother Rachel, and the feelings Isaac doesn't know how to cope with? And what about her young son, who might be the obsessed killer's next victim?Isaac struggles to unravel threads winding through the eugenics movement, gender identity, a religious demagogue, and Hitler's "Jewish problem." As his former friends in town turn against him, help comes-grudgingly-from a slew of the oddest, most quirky characters he has ever met.Isaac is about to learn for himself what it means to be someone who is "not like us."