Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting [magazine] (https://donate.focusonthefamily.com/goaa-thriving “magazine”).
Running Out of Time by Margaret Peterson Haddix has been reviewed by Focus on the Family’s marriage and parenting [magazine] (https://donate.focusonthefamily.com/goaa-thriving “magazine”).
Thirteen-year-old Jessie Keyser lives in the frontier village of Clifton, Indiana, in 1840. Her mother, Ma, is the village midwife, and Jessie often goes with Ma to tend the sick. After several of Clifton’s children, including Jessie’s 6-year-old sister, Katie, get sick from a mysterious illness, Ma reveals a shocking secret to Jessie. They are not living in 1840.
The year is really 1996, and Clifton is a replica of a historic village and tourist attraction with hidden cameras and mirrors that allow visitors to watch the lives of the residents. While the adults know the truth, they are not allowed to tell the children, and no one can leave the village. To preserve Clifton’s authenticity, the owners of the attraction stopped providing medical care and vaccinations. The children have diphtheria and will die if they don’t get treatment.
Ma takes Jessie to a place in the woods with a hidden escape hatch, where the cameras don’t record. Ma saved her clothes from before she lived in Clifton, but she can’t fit into them anymore. She gives Jessie money and instructions on contacting a man, Isaac Neeley, who opposed the concept of Clifton when the attraction opened. She tells Jessie that Mr. Neeley will call the health department and a news conference to expose what is happening in Clifton. Ma warns Jessie that escape will be difficult as the attraction is well guarded.
Jessie escapes into the tourist portion of the attraction and hides in the bathroom for the night. The next day, she blends in with the other visitors and overhears the tour guides telling the tourists that Clifton’s residents get modern medical care and are free to leave when they want. Jessie sees several security cameras around the attraction and decides to sneak into a departing delivery truck so she can leave through the security gates without being seen. After the truck leaves Clifton’s gates, Jessie leaves the truck and attempts to follow her mother’s instructions to find a pay phone and call Mr. Neely. Jessie experiences culture shock and is confused by modern technology.
Jessie’s first attempt to call is unsuccessful. Mr. Neely doesn’t answer the phone. She tries again later and is able to talk to him and tell him her location. He assures her that he will get help for the people in Clifton. Mr. Neely picks Jessie up in his car and takes her to his apartment.
He gives her a glass of water, which is drugged, and insists that she rest. Jessie avoids the water and eavesdrops on Mr. Neely’s conversation. He tells someone that they should close Clifton to tourists immediately. He also tells the person that Jessie knows too much and they may have to kill her. Jessie panics and falls, hitting her head and passing out. When she wakes up, the bedroom door is locked. She escapes through the window.
Jessie is desperate to escape from Mr. Neely’s apartment complex. She has been feeling increasingly sick and wanders as quickly as she can until she gets to a bus stop where an older woman invites her to sit and wait for the bus. Jessie remembers Ma saying the Mr. Neely would call the board of health and a press conference, so she decides to try to do it herself. She gets on the bus and asks the woman where press conferences are held. The woman directs her to the state’s capitol building.
Jessie goes into the building and uses the pay phone to call the health department. She reports the diphtheria outbreak in Clifton, but the person who answers thinks it a prank call and scolds Jessie, threatening to call the police if she calls back. Jessie then uses the directory to find the listings for media outlets and calls, asking them to meet on the steps of the capitol building at 10:30 a.m. to discuss serious problems in Clifton and an evil man planning a murder.
Jessie sits on the steps and sees the reporters arrive for the press conference. They ignore her, looking for the adult in charge to interview. When enough reporters are gathered, Jessie tries to convince them that there is a medical emergency in Clifton and a threat to her life. The reporters don’t believe her, thinking she is a child pulling a prank, but eventually, they ask her to tell the whole story.
When Jessie tells them about Mr. Neely’s betrayal, the reporters tell her the real Mr. Neely died in a car accident several years before. While the reporters are deciding if they believe her, Jessie passes out with a high fever. She contracted diphtheria before she left Clifton.
Jessie wakes up in a hospital. The reporters called the health department and the state police. Clifton was evacuated. The man posing as Mr. Neely, Frank Lyle, is a scientist who planned to use Clifton as an experiment. He and a group of other scientists worked with the owner of the attraction and introduced diphtheria to the population with the hopes that the children with stronger immune systems would survive. The scientists, who were arrested, wanted to produce people with stronger gene pools to resist the disease without the aid of medicine. The tourism aspect of Clifton was just a cover for the experiment.
All the children from Clifton are now at the hospital, including her siblings, but Jessie learns that two children from another family died before the evacuation. Some of Clifton’s residents were working with the scientists and were arrested. Her Ma and Pa have lost custody of their children.
Jessie is desperate to see her parents and talks to a reporter, telling him that Ma and Pa are good parents. Eventually, the children are reunited with their parents, but Clifton is closed, and all the residents must adjust to living in the modern world.
Pa prays before the family eats dinner. Jessie prays to God for guidance when she doesn’t know what to do. The prayer is simple, and she wonders if the reverend in Clifton would approve of her plea. She also wonders if God has any connection to the outside world.
Ma writes Jessie a note, saying she would pray for Jessie while she was away. After the fake Mr. Neely takes Jessie to his apartment, she says a quick bedtime prayer, thanking God for making everything OK. As Jessie climbs out the bedroom window of the apartment building, she prays for God’s help. She thanks God when she lands safely on the ground.
Jesse is angry when she learns that tourists have been watching them, but calms when she remembers that her parents taught her that God is always watching.
None
Ma is a loving and supportive mother who is desperate to save all the children in Clifton. She puts a lot of trust in Jessie to be able to get medicine. Pa is a loving father, but he refuses to acknowledge the danger his family is in or that they are living in 1996, not 1840. Both parents temporarily lose custody of their children. After Clifton is shut down, Pa must see a psychiatrist. Mr. Smythe, Clifton’s teacher, is unkind and impatient to the children. Frank Lyle pretends to be a friend and an adult whom Jessie could trust, even as he planned to murder her.
To maintain the authenticity of the language of 1840, the village children are punished severely for using words and phrases like “OK” and “shut up” — words that were introduced into their vocabulary by Clifton’s adults. Jessie regards saying these words as worse than taking the Lord’s name in vain.
When Jesse was younger, she noticed a camera in one of the trees and started climbing to investigate. The man who owned the general store, Mr. Seward, stopped her and spanked her. Then her Pa spanked her when she arrived home. Ma also tells Jessie that when she kept asking why “OK” and “shut up” were bad words, Pa was beaten.
As Jessie is walking along the highway, two young men stop their car and try to convince her to get in. When she refuses, one of the boys gets out of the car, grabs her and tries to drag her in. She escapes and runs away. Jessie slips and hits her head at the fake Mr. Neely’s house. She escapes through a window on the second floor by jumping.
When the police arrive in Clifton, Mr. Seward holds the schoolchildren as hostages at gunpoint.
Jessie teases her older sister, Hannah, about being in love with a boy, Chester Seward. Hannah asks Ma if she will be an old maid if she isn’t married by 16, like Chester’s father said. Later, Chester defends Hannah from his father when the man holds them hostage, confirming that Chester likes her, too.
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