Search - Running Out of Time

It tells the story of thirteen year old Jessie Keyser, who all her life has believed that she lives in the nineteenth century frontier village of Clifton, Indiana. When diphtheria starts claiming the lives of the village children, her mother tells her that it is not really 1840, as Jessie has been led to believe, but 1996. It appears that the village in which Jessie has grown up is actually a historical preserve, which its inhabitants are forbidden to leave. Jessie, however, is entrusted with a very important mission. She is to leave the preserve and seek help for their village in the outside world, avoiding capture by those who would seek to silence her in order to maintain the status quo and the secret that they are harboring in Clifton.

This book is AWESOME. Haddix is my new favorite "tween" author! Anyone who likes some intrigue/a little sci-fi but NO scare or gore, it's PERFECT!

Excellent book about time travel and a girl who has to take risks to save her family.
(reading level = ages 8-12)

Haddix’s first novel, and still one of my favorites of hers. Everything is just perfect in this book. The pitch-perfect narrator, on the fence between naïve childhood security and scary adolescence. The suspense that will keep you reading breathlessly until you find out what happens at the end. The world-building that makes you wonder if this couldn’t be happening right next door. RUNNING OUT OF TIME is a beautiful blend of the speculative and the probable, and earns its title as one of the best speculative juvenile fiction novels out there today.