Hetty Grace Langford's dad has been missing for three months. His truck is in the driveway. His boots are by the door. The police have given up.

Then, in the cave they used to explore together, she finds a little clay bowl on a ledge, and inside it a note in his handwriting that looks a hundred and fifty years old. Stuck here. Star charts. Promontory. Help.

With her best friend Shawn, a stack of her father's mysterious star charts, and a small gold pyramid that glows when it shouldn't, Hetty follows the only clue she has: to May 10, 1869, the day two railroads met in the middle of nowhere and changed America forever.

Finding Dad is only the first problem. Getting everyone home is the second. And someone back in Vernal is asking a few too many questions.

Includes a "What's True in This Book" guide to the real Golden Spike, a map of the railroad, and illustrations throughout. Ages 8 to 12.

Nancy Elliott lives in Morton, Washington, a small town with a lot of trees, with her husband Bob. Between them they have seven sons and four daughters, a great many grandchildren, and a growing number of great-grandchildren, and every one of them has had a story read to them by Grandma Nancy whether they asked for it or not.

She writes picture books for very small people (The Littlest Star bedtime stories), books for grown-ups, and now the Hetty Grace books: adventures for readers old enough to go into a cave by themselves but still young enough to be told not to. Hetty Grace started on an ordinary day when one of her granddaughters mentioned she had never heard of Promontory Point. Nancy decided that was a problem she could do something about. There are eight more Hetty Grace books on the way.