Thirteen-year-old Jeff is having such a hard time getting over the demise of Buddy, his pet and constant companion since his first birthday, that his parents have taken him on an Alaskan cruise to help him adjust to the bull terrier’s death. They are dismayed when he brings along Buddy’s ashes, and their fellow passengers also find it a little odd. When the ship docks at Juneau, the story takes an even stranger turn: Jeff catches sight of another bull terrier, follows her down an alley, and ends up in another world – 1933 Alaska.

Young readers with Quantum Leap in their frame of reference will realize that Jeff has a mission to perform before he can return to his own time. This bull terrier, Patsy Ann, has plans for him. Along with the captain of a ship called the DogStar and a headstrong girl with pigtails, Jeff is soon entangled in a counterfeiting ring. When he tries to use an American $20 bill from the 1990s to buy a sandwich, he becomes a fugitive from the law, the target of the nefarious plottings of the mayor and the chief of police.

Sound complicated? It gets more so. The story is loaded with detail, some of which could have been trimmed. This is a first foray into young adult fiction for Beverley and Chris Wood, both magazine writers (Chris is Vancouver bureau chief for Maclean’s); the story grew out of their discovery that a real bull terrier named Patsy Ann, known as the Official Greeter of Juneau, lived there in the 1930s. The Woods are bull terrier owners, and their devotion to the peripatetic, eccentric breed is evident in every line. Buddy and Patsy Ann are described with a loving attention to detail bordering on the obsessive, and the sentimental finish, as Buddy and Patsy Ann head off together to dog heaven, is a bit over the top. But as time travel adventure, DogStar grows on the reader, and Patsy Ann’s doggy grin lingers long after the book is done.