Running Out Of Time

Running Out of Time is a 1995 young adult suspense novel by American author Margaret Peterson Haddix. It tells the story of Jessie Keyser, a young girl who believes she is living in 1800s Indiana, only to discover that in reality it is 1996. When a diphtheria epidemic strikes her small town of Clifton, she must venture out into the modern world to save her friends. Haddix also authored the critically acclaimed YA thriller series The Greystone Secrets and The Missing.

Plot Summary

Jessie Keyser lives in Clifton, Indiana, a small village on the American frontier in what she believes in 1840. One night, she helps her mother, the village midwife, treat two sick children. Many children have been getting sick lately. When Ma asks Jessie to secretly meet her the next night at a hidden rock, Jessie is suspicious. Ma then reveals that the year is actually 1996 and that the sick children have a disease called diphtheria. Clifton is really a historical preserve where the villagers are not allowed to leave or receive modern medicine, while tourists watch them via hidden cameras and two-way mirrors. Ma asks Jessie to sneak out of Clifton through a rock which hides a trapdoor and find a payphone.