Time travel -- and its hazards -- are made literal in this novel in which a recklessly idealistic girl dares to test the perimeters of her tightly controlled (future) world and is punished by being sent back in time to a region of North America -- 'Wainscotia, Wisconsin' -- that existed eighty years before. Cast adrift in time in this idyllic midwestern town, she is set upon a course of 'rehabilitation' -- but cannot resist falling in love with a fellow exile and questioning the constraints of the Wainscotia world with results that are both devastating and liberating.