In 1899, George and Willie Muse were two black boys living with their sharecropper family in Truevine, Virginia. One day a white man abducted them into the circus, setting off events that would take them around the world and change their lives forever. The Muses were displayed as cannibals, sheep-headed freaks, even "Ambassadors from Mars," while their mother never believed they were dead and spent 28 years trying to find them. Through hundreds of interviews and decades of research, Beth Macy tells their compelling story and asks: Where were the brothers better off—on the stage as stars, or in poverty at home?