Tara Atwater holds the right combination of numbers to the record-breaking Ohio state lottery. But what to do about the boyfriend, stabbed to death, on the kitchen floor? It was, after all, his ticket. A diversionary fire might be the answer. Left in her grandparents’ care as her reckless mother worked the carnival circuit, Tara learned about sleight-of-hand flame, purposely created to distract from something far bigger, at age nine. As decades flicker past, from the 1970s until the beginning of a global pandemic, the diversionary fire is a strange art that will touch her and those she loves. From the most marginal of means to unimagined wealth and status, Tara learns that good luck and bad luck, no matter how dense the inferno, can look a lot alike.