In which the town of Nautilus is stirred to a fever pitch by Dr. Pickerbaugh’s grand Health Fair, a spectacle of earnest displays and earnester controversies that sets the stage for a dazzling yet precarious rise to local glory. Amid the chaos of public praise, pungent rivalry, and the smoke of literal and figurative fires, appointments and ambitions intertwine, revealing the delicate dance of earnestness and expediency in small-town politics.