When ten-year-old orphan Peter Augustus Duchene encounters a fortune teller in the marketplace one day and she tells him that his sister, who is presumed dead, is in fact alive, he embarks on a remarkable series of adventures as he desperately tries to find her.

Trapped in a trunk, five puppets--a king, a wolf, a girl, a boy, and an owl--bicker, boast, and comfort one another in the dark. Individually, they dream of song and light, freedom and flight, purpose and glory, but they all agree that they are part of a larger story, bound to one another by chance and bonded by the heart's mysteries. When at last their shared fate arrives, landing them on a mantel in a blue room in the home of two little girls, the...