This is a book which will take modern-day children on an historical adventure into the past of Mackinac Island, one of the most popular tourist attractions in the Great Lakes. Four cousins learn that their grandfather's labyrinth has special powers to transport them back into the past, in this case, to Mackinac Island circa 1823. While struggling to get back to their own time and place, they meet and work with some of the more colorful and famous inhabitants of the island when it was simply an army outpost and hub of Astor's fur trading empire.