"The Fortune Teller's Factotum is a high-flying adventure; fasten your seatbelt!" ¿¿Twenty year old Ashley Hyde is happy not to know the ugly secrets in her showbiz family. She needs to escape her smalltown existence and the gossip that follows her misfortunes. While she can almost see the funny side of getting very publicly dumped by a man not worth her trouble, and writing off two cars in as many months, it's really time to kickstart her new life studying medicine at Columbia. She has a bad day, losing not only her stepmom's celebrity daytime TV cat but her dad's precious car, while inconveniently dressed as an 18th century farm worker. The theft of a replacement cat from the local fortune teller brings Ashley face to face with that lady's factotum, the frighteningly competent Mary Dorn. Their ensuing friendship brings to light a terrible shared history, of suspicious disappearances and deaths, and of a family of arms dealers bought whole by the CIA, in an American tale that spans a turbulent century.