Ten years after his sister's mysterious death by asphyxiation, Johnny Longfellow, 21, is lured to Key West by the promise of clarity. There he meets the performers of Loose Associations who entertain their nightly crowds by combining social phenomena with acts of illusion. Beyond the sensationalism of this nightly underworld, lies a story where Johnny, known by his friends as Fellow, is forced to reckon with the reverberations of his sister's death. He must decide which parts of the illusion are useful and which parts must be leveraged in order to unearth his own selfhood.