The Glass Sentence: The Mapmakers Trilogy, Book 1

Thirteen-year-old Sophia lives with her Uncle Shadrack in Boston in the late 1800s -- at least, it's the late 1800s in that half of the continent. Decades before, an event called the Great Disruption occurred, fracturing the globe into different eras. Little is known of the time periods on some parts of the globe, so an age of exploration is underway -- a dangerous age, it seems. Sophia's parents, both explorers and cartographers, left when she was young and never returned. Uncle Shadrack also is a cartographer and much sought-after for his skill reading maps that emerged from many different eras. He's only just started tutoring Sophia in fantastic creations called memory maps when he disappears, his home ransacked. A boy named Theo who escaped from the circus sees it happen; Shadrack is kidnapped by scarred men with grappling hooks. In the chaos, Sophia finds a note from her uncle telling her to "find Veressa" -- a fellow cartographer in the faraway Baldlands -- along with a strange glass map she can't read...a map that Shadrack's kidnappers are desperate to get their hands on.