Mike O'Malley, the misfit younger brother of a famous clown, has risen through the ranks from cleaning up after elephants to apprentice clown to business manager of the Great Western Circus of the Americas. But when his grandiose ideas for modernizing the circus end up destroying it instead, he's forced into hiding by the furious clown cabal. Mike manages to avoid the certain and swift justice of the International Clown Court for twenty years. It's not until his secret protector dies and he's betrayed by his own sister that Mike is forced to go on the run. While attempting to escape to the only clown-free city in America, he gives a ride to an amateur con woman, Jordan LeBlanc, and they both end up in a secret clown jail underneath Minneapolis. Jordan devises an escape plan, but the price of its success is that Mike must confront his past, or perish.