Jessie Keyser has lived 13 years thinking that she lives in a rural village called Clifton, Indiana, in 1840. When her village is struck with a bout of diphtheria, her mother tells her the truth: the year is really 1996, and Clifton is nothing but a replica of a historic village being used as a tourist attraction. Jessie is sent to go get the cure for diphtheria in secret from the outside world from a scientist named Mr. Issac Neeley and expose the truth of Clifton. But something more dangerous is afoot during Jessie's search as a Fish out of Temporal Water—that the people in charge don't want the secret getting out.
A sequel, Falling Out of Time, came out in 2023 about a descendant of Jessie's who lives in a seeming utopia in 2193, only to learn otherwise.
M. Night Shyamalan's The Village (2004) has a similar premise, and rumors exist the film was directly inspired by this book; the publisher, Simon & Schuster, made a public allegation of such, though never filed an actual lawsuit.
For the trope that means "running out of time", see Race Against the Clock. Not related to either the Ozzy Osbourne song or the 1999 film by the Hong Kong director Johnnie To.
Tropes used by the novel:
- The '90s: The book is set in the present day of the time—the 1990s—and the trends from the actual "present day" are strange and confusing to Jessie who has been raised in mid 19th century mentalities.
- Abusive Parents: Discussed after Jessie exposes the masquerade and is hospitalized for diphtheria. Her parents and all the other adults are investigated on charges of child neglect and emotional abuse and separated from their children. One journalist points out that it was a huge burden for Jessie's mother to expect her child to carry the mission of notifying adults about the epidemic, though Jessie protests that she had to be the one to do it because her mother no longer fit into her only pair of modern-day clothes. Some parents are arrested, like Mr. Seward, but Jessie's parents are cleared and allowed to retain custody of their kids, provided that her dad goes to a therapist to deal with his mental break into forcing himself to think it was the 1800s..
- Adults Are Useless: The only adults around Jessie are A) unable to help, B) so far into denial/fear that they can't see the problem to help, or C) actively causing or supporting The Masquerade. This is fortunately averted with the adults outside of the village who quickly take action to end the experiment and clear the village out once the truth is revealed.
- Artistic License – History: One of the words that adults are punished for using is "okay," as it's seen as "modern speech" being used in the false 1840s. However, the word was popularized in 1839
as an abbreviation for "oll korrect" (an intentional misspelling) and was part of the 1840 US Presidential election as the campaign slogan for Martin Van Buren, and the term remained popular from then on. If anything, the adults using the word would have been more authentic, but tourists peeking in on Clifton might not have believed the word as being from that era. - Big Brother Is Watching: Since the tourists obviously can't interact with the villagers, special portraits of the President, trick mirrors, and similar tactics are used to let them observe from afar. At least one tourist has commented on how voyeuristic it all is, but the tour guides cheerfully explain that the villagers are aware of the surveillance and have all consented to it and then moves the group along. When Jessie's Ma admits that this was a really terrible thing to do to her children, Jessie tries to comfort her by saying, "You always did tell us God saw everything we did." Mrs. Keyser laughs and says that was something they deliberately emphasized. "Would you have behaved better if we said 'God and a bunch of strangers you've never met?'"
- Bittersweet Ending: The men responsible for the experiment are arrested, the majority of the children survive the diphtheria outbreak, and Jessie and her friends and family can look forward to living a new modern life in the present day. But several of the adults are traumatized at having to keep up the Masquerade for so long including Jessie's father, and two of the children did not survive the diphtheria plague that prompted Jessie to have to leave the village in the first place.
- Brainy Brunette: Jessie laments that she's not pretty like her sister Hannah, but she's the smartest student in school. This is a part of the reason that Ma chooses Jessie, and not Hannah, to escape the village.
- Cannot Tell Fiction from Reality: Jessie's father wanted to join Clifton Village because he was a genuinely talented blacksmith from his time working in another historical village, but there was no real call for that in the 1980s. After he was beaten by Clifton's men because Jessie was poking around the cameras, he began repressing his knowledge of the outside world and wouldn't let his wife speak of it. At the end of the book, he's still so deeply in denial that he needs a therapist, who has agreed that the family living on the Clifton site while they ease into the modern world would help.
- Chekhov's Gun: The environmentalist's comment about how you can't trust the water, referring to a ditch that Jessie was about to drink out of, ends up saving her when she's given a glass of water with a sedative dissolved in it. She remembers talking to him and dumps the water out the window instead.
- Cool, Clear Water: Jessie, feeling thirsty after escaping from the fake 1840's village, stops to take a drink from water flowing through a ditch, believing it's safe. An environmentalist stops her in time telling her that, despite the water's pristine appearance, it's nowhere near safe to drink.
- Dead Person Impersonation: Jessie is told to find Isaac Neeley, a man who opposed the formation of Clifton and can expose the diphtheria epidemic to the public and the media, and hopefully force Clifton's men to get treatment for the sick kids. However, Isaac Neeley died in a car accident sometime in the decade between Mrs. Keyser losing all access to the outside world and Jessie being sent out into it. Frank Lyle found out who Jessie was aiming to contact when his henchman bumped into her and saw the paper with his name and phone number on it, so he broke into the house of the family who now had the number so he'd be the one to answer her call and pretend to be Mr. Neeley.
- Death of a Child: Two children—Abby and Jefferson—die from diphtheria, despite Jessie's success in exposing the village.
- Double-Meaning Title: "Running Out of Time" refers to how Jessie is in a Race Against the Clock to save the Clifton children, and how Jessie is literally running out of her time period into the present day.
- Evilutionary Biologist: Frank Lyle, whose reason for letting people get sick in Clifton was to strengthen the immune systems of the survivors. Note he was using children to do it—children that didn't know what they were being subjected to or even that they didn't live in the 1800s—and that, after arrest, he insists that the experiment was valid and he intends to sue the state for interfering. When interviewed, he states that people who survive diseases that they used to die from pass on their "weak" genes and that by exposing people to illnesses, only the strong genes will remain in the pool. He thinks he's A Well-Intentioned Extremist.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: While Jessie is not really from 1840, she's from a strictly-run historical preserve village and has grown up her entire life believing it's really that time. So the world of 1996 is completely alien to her and she is massively out of place, not understanding things like phones, cars, and not to drink out of random ditches.
- Gone Horribly Right: Jessie is told to wear her mother's clothes and blend in until she finds the man in charge of the experiment. This means that she has a hard time proving her claims on learning that the scientists were infecting the children on purpose.
- He Knows Too Much: Jessie's knowledge of what's happening in the town is reason enough for the henchmen to want to kill her on Mr "Neeley"'s orders.
- Heroic BSoD: After learning the false Mr. Neeley is planning to kill her to keep the town's truth a secret, Jessie becomes convinced that she won't ever be able to escape the apartment, let alone save Katie and all the other Clifton children. She comes out of it enough to call a press conference, and is successful.
- Hostage Situation: Mr. Steward and Mr. Smythe hold the children in Clifton hostage in the schoolhouse after Jessie's news conference, to try and keep the health officials out. When Mr. Steward tries to threaten the police by saying he'll shoot the kids, Hannah thinks about what Jessie would be brave enough to do and trips him, letting his son Chester take the rifle. Mr. Smythe runs out as a coward, and Chester marches his own father out to the waiting police.
- Innocent Bigot:
- When Jessie gets to the outside world, she meets Nicole, a black girl, and briefly considers commenting on how surprisingly smart she is and asking her what it's like to be a "Negro." Fortunately, she doesn't get a chance to actually say it.
- Less innocent are the people she recalls from Clifton during this. Jessie's been told that "Negros" have skin that is "pure black and hair that is pure curl," and that they aren't as smart as white people—something she immediately notes is untrue because Nicole is very intelligent and the only person who brings up the creepiness of the voyeurism. She also notes, upon seeing Nicole among white classmates, that "the abolitionists in Clifton" got their wish with slavery abolished—which implies that there are anti-abolitionists (i.e., people who support slavery) in Clifton.
- Instant Illness: Averted. Jessie has no idea she's also caught diphtheria until she collapses during her press conference, and initially thinks her symptoms are from running around all day without any water.
- Kid Hero: Jessie, naturally. However, the trope is also deconstructed later on, by having someone bring into question what Jessie's mother was thinking when she snuck Jessie out of the town on her own to get help. This infuriates Jessie, who reminds the reporter explaining this to her that she already told him why she went instead of the adults: they only had one change of clothes, and none of the adult women could fit into them after multiple pregnancies.
- Masquerade: The adults who joined Clifton when it was founded obviously know the truth, but they raised their children to believe it was the 1840s. They were initially meant to explain everything to the kids once they were old enough to understand, but that ended up being forbidden before any of the children could find out. The odd anachronism, such as the words "okay" and "shut up", still manage to creep in, which does not please the men in charge.
- Next Sunday A.D.: Jessie travels into the "current year" of 1996, but the book itself was actually released in 1995.
- Not So Remote: And how! From an isolated little village on the frontier to inside a tourist center.
- Obsolete Occupation: Jessie's dad is a talented blacksmith in an era where there is literally no use for one outside historical recreation villages like Clifton. After things start going south in Clifton, he represses his knowledge of the modern day and sinks firmly into denial. At first, Jessie's mother believed his refusal to talk about their modern-day lives was him simply trying to protect her (he'd been beaten for Jessie poking around the cameras), but she comes to believe it's deeper than that and Joseph Keyser ends up having the hardest time readjusting.
- Past Right Now: The existence of the historical preserved village, a key aspect of the story. While the adults remember a time when the village was allowed to be connected to the "present", none of the children do.
- Post-Victory Collapse: Subverted; Jessie collapses in the middle of her news conference, reciting a Clifton lesson (and states that Michigan is the most recent state of the union, proving she really thinks she grew up in the 1840s), but it serves the same purpose: the journalists realize she's severely ill and they all believe her, and she comes to later in the hospital after being treated.
- Playing with Syringes: Clifton is actually the brain child of a few scientists, funded by a millionaire, who are trying to breed a race of super humans by releasing various diseases into the water until the survivors are immune to all of them. After they're arrested, Mr. Clifton agrees to cooperate while Mr. Lyle insists that the experiment was valid and wants to sue the state for interference.
- Red Herring: While Jessie is trying to escape Mr. "Neeley"'s room, she notes that her body feels achy and her throat is sore. She assumes it's because she walked all day yesterday and hasn't drank for several hours. It's actually because she has diphtheria and collapses during the press conference she calls.
- Seeking the Missing, Finding the Dead: Jessie finds out that the real Isaac Neeley died several years ago; he's being impersonated by one of the scientists, Frank Lyle. Of course, her mother didn't know because none of the adults are allowed outside information, especially when it would be pertinent to helping escape the situation.
- Small, Secluded World: Clifton is separated completely from the outside world and has been for almost 20 years, being founded in the 1980s and serving as a historic preserve where the tourists who see them are told the people there know it's the modern era and are aware they're not in the past. While the adults who came in know there's an outside world, any children who have been born there really do believe it's 1840 and they live in the mid-19th century. There had been plans to tell each child as they turned thirteen, but this was recanted by the founders to forcibly preserve the authenticity (and all the adults must keep up the Masquerade or be severely punished) so it actually is a severe shock to Jessie to learn it's really 1996.
- Something Only They Would Say: The reporters at Jessie's press conference can't prove her story of a diphtheria epidemic, but they can prove she's a Clifton child: they ask her to recite all the Presidents, states, and capitals, like she would in the schoolroom. She does so near flawlessly — stopping at Michigan, which for her was the last state to enter the Union — and then promptly faints from diphtheria, proving that, too.
- There Are No Therapists: Played straight in the village, as the 1840's weren't swimming with psychiatrists. Averted in the end when Jessie's dad is required to attend therapy, to deal with his denial of reality.
- "Truman Show" Plot: While not a reality show per se, the people of Clifton are observed by tourists at any given time. Only the children didn't know the truth of where in time they were.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Mr. Neeley (really Frank Lyle) thinks of himself as this and wants to strengthen humanity against diseases. However, he was using children to do it—children that didn't know what they were being subjected to or even that they didn't live in the 1800s—and after arrest, insists that the experiment was valid and he intends to sue the state for interfering. When interviewed, he states that people who survive diseases that they used to die from pass on their "weak" genes and that by exposing people to illnesses, only the strong genes will remain. So he's really a Evilutionary Biologist.
- What Would X Do?: Jessie's older sister, Hannah. When Clifton's men hold the school hostage, she thinks "What would Jessie do?" and trips Mr. Seward so that he drops his rifle. His son, Chester (who Jessie was teasing Hannah about having a crush on) picks it up and refuses to give it back to his father, because he'll use it to hurt Hannah. Chester instead marches his father outside of the schoolhouse and into police custody. Jessie then confesses to Hannah that she tried to be cautious like her when out in the "real" world.
- Wham Line:
- For Jessie, when she learns that it's not 1840 after all from her mother.
- "Mr. Neeley" saying that Jessie knows too much and that they'll have to kill her.
- After Jessie escapes the apartment she went to, she mentions meeting up with Isaac Neeley, to which someone reveals that "Isaac Neeley" has been dead for years. The man she met is actually Frank Lyle, one of the scientists behind letting the disease spread.
