London, 1885: A challenging place for a young, beautiful woman of limited means. But Eliza is modern before her time. Not for her the stifling, if respectable, conventionality of marriage, children, domestic drudgery. She longs for more. Through her work as an artist's model, she meets the magnetic and irascible Devil Wix. With self-styled impresario Devil at the helm of the Palmyra Theatre, acrobats and illusionists astonish audiences with their death-defying stunts and the magic of mysterious new inventions--like electricity. Backstage, secret romances, box-office dramas, and power struggles inevitably simmer, and intermittently boil over.