Just home after graduating from prep school, 17-year-old Ellis meets up with old grade-school classmates, Jackie Cattle and Christo Kilmer. These two boys, along with three sisters, help to trigger the bizarre events of the next 24 hours.

Jackie persuades Ellis to drive him to a party at the Kilmers, where they meet two sisters, Ursa and Leona. From the party, they go back to the girls' home, a dilapidated motel named The Land-of-Smiles. Here Ellis enters a world he never knew existed. He meets Fox, the third sister, who foretells events through a red crystal ball with uncanny accuracy.

Ellis is trying to make sense of the suicide of his best friend Simon and to understand his own life and where it's going. However, even for Ellis, events are moving too fast. Each chapter advances the clock, then stops time as the events take place; Ellis has no power over the story unfolding in front of him.

"Out of nowhere it seemed, a huge wind came funneling down the street. This starts the out-of-control events that will shape his life forever...It was as if he had suddenly turned into the hero of a story that he knew by heart."

Ellis finds that he has become a different person than the prep school student of 24 hours ago. He can only act instinctively and bravely as he tries to save the baby that Leona cares for as if it were her own. And although he has no power over the story, he has to know how it ends.

"Yesterday I was walking along planning the next year or two. Then I met Jackie and in the following twenty-four hours, I did every single thing I'd been planning to do over the coming year."

Margaret Mahy has shown the reader what a writer can do with the short span of 24 hours. She has managed to develop her characters as well as an exciting and complete story line, while establishing a distinct sense of time and place. The events will hold you spellbound as you read on to find out what changes each new hour will bring about in Ellis's life.

--- Reviewed by Audrey Marie Danielson