The resilience of unlikely love

Ferret, a pickpocket turned ventriloquist, performs amid the potion peddlers, organ grinders and lion tamers at the 1898 Omaha World’s Fair, until he falls in love with Cecily, an actor in the midway’s Chamber of Horrors. The couple attract the attention of the fair’s sinister founder, only to prove that love cannot be defeated, even in death. Constantly surprising and utterly mesmerizing. 

The Swan Gondola, Timothy Schaffert, $30.