On loan from a Wild West show, young Cherokee Two Feathers is a horse-diver at Glendale Park Zoo. Her closest friend is Hank Crawford—part of a land-owning Black family—and neither fits easily into the segregated 1920s Nashville. After disaster strikes during one of Two's shows, ghosts appear, and then the hippo falls mysteriously ill. Glendale's zookeeper and a World War I veteran, Clive is haunted—literally—by memories of war, and to help him, Two assembles an eclectic cast of performers, employees, and even the wealthy stakeholders.