Sam Sullivan is unsettled and restless. He's in trouble at school, his parents have split up and there's never enough money. He decides to go busking at the market, and finds himself taken back in time to the year 1900, where he finds new friends, adventures, risks and opportunities. He gets mixed up with some newsboys involved in an illegal tote, pawns his trumpet, learns how to catch eels for breakfast in the botanic gardens, discovers a great-uncle he never knew he had. Sam learns that he can't change the past and that he can reconcile himself to life in the present.
