Patty and Traddy Lee, the children of a captain in the Army Corps of Engineers who is
suddenly sent to work on the Panama Canal, are unintentionally left on their own for a few
weeks during which they run into a clock that runs backward and takes them to 17th century
New York, Captain Kidd, parts unknown in Central America, and a kind of Neverland called the
Land of the Vanished People,
— Michael Main
“Where you doin?” he asked, quite as though he had been accustomed to meeting old
clocks on the stairs.
“I’m bound for yes-ter-day,” the clock replied. “Want to
go to yes-ter-day?”