It had to be the worst day of seventh grader Kevin Larson's life. First his little brother breaks his favorite blue bottle, then the school bully entertains himself by stomping on Kevin's hand. When the bully gleefully tells the teacher Kevin hasn't even started the history report due the next day, Kevin knows he's doomed. Even with the help of his buddies, Naomi, Michael and Tasha, he hasn't got a prayer of writing the ten-page report overnight.

But when his friends gather with him in his room to help him write, fate has one more trick to play on Kevin. A visit to a strange Web site and the antics of Kevin's cat, Snowflake, launch the four seventh-graders on a remarkable adventure more than a century into the past. Trapped in the wrong time, sheltered by a young girl named Sarah, Kevin and his friends struggle to devise a way to return to the future. But when Kevin discovers Sarah's dark secret, he has a new mission-save Sarah from her abusive stepfather, even if it means being trapped forever in the past.