The following version of this book was used to create this study guide: Reiss, Kathryn. Time Window. First Harcourt Paperbacks. 1991. Kindle.

The book is narrated by a third-person limited narrator in the past tense. The narrator has a close focalization on Miranda Browne, the 13-year-old protagonist. In the prologue, which is set after the events of the novel, the narrator revealed that Miranda could not remember what happened with her dollhouse. In the first chapter, Miranda and her two loving parents drove from New York City to Garnet, Massachusetts to move into their new home. Helen was starting a new medical practice in Garnet, and Philip was planning to take a year off to figure out what he should do with his life since he was no longer a history professor. Miranda was excited to meet her new neighbors and sign up for eighth grade, which she would start in the fall, but when she arrived, she became fascinated with a dollhouse in the attic.

The dollhouse was a perfect replica of the new house. However, it also had magic powers that enabled only Miranda to look through the windows and see scenes that had occurred in the different rooms of the real house. At first, Miranda is frightened, but she pushes past her fear and dedicates all her free time to looking through the dollhouse windows and learning about the people who used to live in her house.

Over the next few weeks, Miranda realized that the dollhouse was showing her two families. The Galworthys had lived in the house in 1904. Sigmund and Lucinda Galworthy had one daughter—Dorothy Arabella. Lucinda was a cruel and abusive woman who resented being a housewife and mother because she wanted to be a lawyer. and her husband would not let her leave the house. Dorothy was a sweet little girl who feared her mother, but loved her father dearly. The second family had lived in the house in 1942. Andrew and Iris Kramer were a happily married couple with two little boys—Jeff and Timmy. However, shortly after they moved into the house, Iris started getting intense headaches. She also started experiencing episodes of extreme rage that caused her to abuse her children. After the rage passed, she could not believe or remember what she had done. One day, she locked the boys in the attic. They were cold, so they lit a fire, but then they almost suffocated. Their father came home and let them escape, and the family moved out shortly after.

In between learning about the Galworthys and Kramers, Miranda signed up for flute lessons with Eleanor Wainwright, a local historian. Philip planned a trip back to New York for a weight loss party the same weekend that Helen’s brother, Willy, decided to stop by for the weekend with his family. Miranda and her mother happily greeted Uncle Willy, Aunt Belle, and their two children—Anni and Simon. However, Aunt Belle immediately started to get a headache. The next day, she began snapping at her children, which was out of character for her. By the end of the day, she was attempting to beat them for playing with a Frisbee. Helen and Willy prevented Belle from doing so, and then Belle returned to herself in horror and could not believe what she had tried to do.

Willy and his family left the next day, but Belle warned Helen and Miranda that they should leave because their house was dangerous. Philip returned to Garnet with Miranda’s best friend from New York, Nicole. The two girls had a nice week together, but Helen and Philip started fighting. When they all drove Nicole back to New York the next weekend, Helen and Philip started getting along better. However, when they returned to Garnet, Helen started a huge argument and slapped Miranda.

Miranda went to her flute lesson and asked Eleanor about the history of her house. Eleanor revealed that Sigmund Galworthy had left Garnet after his wife and daughter had died in a train crash in 1904. Helen and Philip started discussing the idea of moving, but Miranda was adamant that she wanted to stay in their house even though her mother kept getting headaches and snapping at everyone.

One day, Miranda went next door to spend time with her neighbors, the Hootons, who ran the Garnet Museum. She learned that their house had a secret room that was used for the underground railroad. They told her that her house had one too, so she went in search of it with Dan Hooton, who was just one year older than her.

They went up to the attic to look, but could not find the secret room. However, Dan noticed that Miranda was obsessed with the dollhouse, so he made her tell him about it, and she revealed all its magic to him. He had a hard time believing her, but that night, she saw a vision of the fire Timmy and Jeff started in the attic, and she noticed a strange shadow.

Miranda went to see Dan the next day, and then she invited him to come over and look in the attic again for the secret room. They found a trapdoor and enlisted her father to come up and use his tools to open it. Once it was open, Miranda crawled inside. To her horror, she found the skeletal remains of Dorothy. The police arrived to take the body, and the newspapers printed stories about the strange case.

Miranda and Dan went to the graveyard to look at Dorothy’s tombstone. They tried to have a séance to contact her, but it did not work. Miranda went up to the dollhouse to try and contact Dorothy that way. She watched through the dollhouse window as Lucinda beat Dorothy for spilling her perfume, then locked her in the attic before leaving with her secret love for New York City. Miranda realized that Dorothy had died inside the attic because her father believed she had died on the train with Lucinda, so he had never come home. Miranda was confused about why Dorothy had been in the secret room, though, but then Dorothy saw Miranda looking through the dollhouse window and got so frightened she hid inside the trapdoor.

Miranda went to see Dan and they realized that she could possibly change the past. Miranda went home, and her mother attacked her for being late, then locked her in the attic. Miranda looked through the dollhouse windows and saw that Lucinda had dropped the key between the kitchen floorboards before she left the house. Miranda snuck out to retrieve the key, then went back up to the attic and placed it inside the dollhouse. Miraculously, Dorothy grabbed the key and let herself out of the attic so she could go find her father.

Miranda went downstairs and learned that she had changed the present. Her parents had not been fighting, her mother had not had any headaches, and no skeleton had been found in the attic. She went to the graveyard and discovered that there was no tombstone for Dorothy, either. Miranda found Dan and told him everything, but he did not believe her because he thought they had spent the whole summer having picnics and riding bikes. Dorothy went to her flute practice. While she was waiting for Eleanor, she met Susannah—the great-granddaughter of Dorothy, who was still alive and happy.