Charlotte Hartlace's best friend since kindergarten, Lyric Jackson-Kenney, doesn't want to do any of the things the girls used to do together. In fact, she doesn't seem to be speaking to Charlotte at all (or has Charlotte stopped speaking to her? Who can keep track?). Meanwhile, Charlotte's beloved older sibling, Eli, came home after college graduation for just ten days before moving out, into their own apartment, starting their grownup life. And Charlotte's parents are too busy with work this summer to notice how unhappy their 11½-year-old daughter is.
When an elderly neighbor, Maud Whiton, befriends Charlotte one lonely afternoon, things start looking up. Charlotte and Maud have long talks on Maud's front porch, and Maud hires her to walk her dog, Murry, whom Charlotte has loved from afar all her life (the two are exactly the same age-"old for a dog," Charlotte thinks, "but young for a human"). Charlotte finds herself spending more and more time with Murry and Maud, and one day Maud gives Charlotte a wristwatch she's had since she was Charlotte's age. Suddenly the summer takes a turn: the watch her new friend has given her turns out to have the power to take Charlotte hurtling through time.
But not just anywhere in time. It is very specific to her, so sensitive to the questions she asks herself that it responds by instantly sending her through years or decades to deposit her in the lives of those who are most important to her-including Murry as a puppy in need of adoption, Eli before Charlotte was born, when they were still known as Eliza Ann, and Charlotte's own grownup self. And when Maud and Murry mysteriously disappear, it's thanks to the magic of her travels in time-and the "ordinary" real-world magic of friendship and family-that Charlotte is able to rescue them.
All the Time in the World is longtime novelist, essayist, memoirist, and advice columnist Michelle Herman's eleventh book, and her first novel for young people.
