When fourteen-year-old Abby Kate boards the train in Austin to spend three weeks with her grandmother in Galveston, she's full of excitement - about the train ride and the prospect of days on the beach, exploring Galveston with her cousin, Jane, family picnics, and her grandmother's good food. But things go wrong even before she gets to her grandmother's house. Abby gets off the train briefly in Houston - and the train leaves without her. Stranded in the railroad station, she is befriended by a man traveling with his two sons and eventually reaches Galveston safely, to the relief of her grandmother, aunt, uncle, and two cousins.<BR>Then word comes that Abby Kate's young brother, Will, has diphtheria, and she will have to stay in Galveston indefinitely. Three weeks stretch into a summer, and Abby Kate is still in Galveston on September 8 when the massive hurricane strikes the city.<BR>At first the prospect of a storm is exciting. But when Abby Kate takes an ill-advised trip to watch the waves crash on the beach, the storm turns into a terrifying monster. Unable to make it back to Grandmother Linden's house, Abby Kate, her older cousin, Ellen, and Ellen's friend, Ian, take refuge in the home of one of Ian's teachers. When the house falls apart, Abby Kate is on her own, clinging to a plank in swirling waters with the wind howling around her head.<BR>With vivid descriptions, Julie Lake plunges the reader into the storm right along with Abby Kate. The Galveston hurricane of September 8, 1900, remains the worst national disaster to hit the United States. Between six and eight thousand people were killed, thirty-six-hundred buildings were destroyed, and damage was estimated at $20 million. In today's money, that would be more than $700 million.<BR>And Abby Kate? She's spunky, mischievous, kind and caring, courageous when she has to be, and absolutely irresistible!