SYNOPSIS: OUT OF TIME
by Janet Hayward Burnham;
Bethel, Vermont 05032

12 year-old redheaded first cousins. . . Neilly Adams from Vermont and Jazeen Wiggins from California. . . come to a small town in Ohio to spend the summer with their eccentric Grandma T. Grandma T, who always dreamed of being a ballerina, doesn't simply sleep walk every night. . .she sleep dances.

At first meeting the girls seem to have nothing in common except their looks. One is taller and dusky skinned because her father is black. But other than that, they look very much alike, which isn't surprising since their mothers are identical twins. Not only do they have little in common. . .one planning to be a scientist, the other a writer. . .they don't particularly like each other. What each had hoped was going to be a wonderful fun-filled summer, looks as though it's going to be the worst summer vacation in recorded history.

But something else is not quite right at Grandma T's. It seems that the girls are being called to go back in time.

It has something to do with their 4th great grandfather, Josiah Nickerson, who fought in the Civil War and was imprisoned in the infamous Confederate prison, Andersonville in Georgia. They are informed that Josiah is sick. Further, if he's not ransomed out of Andersonville, he will surely die. And if he dies... everyone who came after him. . .including the girls themselves. . .will cease to exist! Jazeen says she's going home to California. She's not staying anyplace that's haunted. But before she can bring herself to tell Grandma T that she wants to go home, things begin to fade. Grandma T's arm, when she's pointing at a blue heron flying by, seems to fade in and out. Jazeen's left shoe begins to have the same problem.

Whether they like it or not, there doesn't seem to be much of any choice in the matter. They are going to have to go back in time to try their best to get Josiah out of Andersonville. It's either that, or . . .poof! . . .they're gone.

One of the girls being black of course makes an interesting problem in the slave owning south of the 1860's. They learn to work together, to value each other's strengths. They also learn some hard truths about the south and slavery. . .coming away with a better understanding of the problems that slavery caused, of the horrible price that was paid by everyone. . .southerners, and northerners, and the slaves themselves, to overturn a whole economy that was based on slave labor. They found that so much that they thought was black or white, right or wrong. . .was in reality shades of gray. As evidenced by the free slave, Sally Snow, who lived a free black woman in the midst of slavery because as she says. . . " I owns this land and Sally can't move her land." They hear, too, of the plantation owner's sister who was in danger of being imprisoned for teaching her slaves to read.