Pleasant Prairie is much like hundreds of other towns that lie between the Mississippi and the Rockies. There is a railroad running through it, and standing tall and proud next to the tracks there is a set of grain elevators. There is a bank, a church, the county courthouse, and a main street which in practical Midwestern fashion is named Main Street. As with most small towns, the residents are born and die, get married and beget children, all within the confines of Pleasant Prairie. But outside of harvest time when the railroad and the grain elevators bustle with activity, nothing much ever happens in Pleasant Prairie. Nothing much, that is, until the day the carnival came to town.