The Landis family, motoring through Canada with their teen-age daughter, Lauren, take a coffee break in a small village in spite of some sinister characters there and lose Lauren to the back seat of the wrong car. Sure that she is in the hands of a gang (a ""car dealer"" and an across-the-border operation), unable to persuade the police, their search for Lauren alternates with her attempts to escape, helped by a local teenager. An old author with a new type of story, no longer folksy, but updated in language and uptempo in activity. A change, on the whole for the better.