Homecoming
Cynthia Voigt (1981)
“Four children are abandoned in a parking lot by their mother and walk two hundred miles down the Connecticut coast to find a home — and discover that home is not a place but a choice.”
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Homecoming
Cynthia Voigt (1981) · 416pages · Contemporary · 1 AP appearances
Summary
Thirteen-year-old Dicey Tillerman and her three younger siblings — James, Maybeth, and Sammy — are abandoned by their mentally ill mother in a shopping mall parking lot in Peewauket, Connecticut. With almost no money and no adult help, Dicey leads them on a journey south toward Bridgeport, where their Aunt Cilla lives. When Aunt Cilla turns out to be dead, they are taken in by her daughter Eunice, a rigid, joyless woman. Dicey realizes Eunice's home will crush them. She leads the children further south to Crisfield, Maryland, where their grandmother Abigail Tillerman lives alone on a rundown farm. Gram is fierce, independent, and suspicious of attachment — but the children need her, and she needs them. The novel ends with Gram agreeing to take them in.
Why It Matters
Homecoming and its sequel Dicey's Song are among the most celebrated children's novels of the twentieth century. The Tillerman cycle — seven novels — defined a new standard for psychological complexity in children's literature. Homecoming was a Newbery Honor Book (1982), and Dicey's Song won the ...
Themes & Motifs
Diction & Style
Register: Deliberately informal — a child's perspective rendered in clean, unadorned prose
Narrator: Close third person through Dicey — the narrative stays within Dicey's perception and vocabulary. The narrator does no...
Figurative Language: Very low
Historical Context
Early 1980s America — Reagan era, economic recession, changing family structures: Homecoming was written during a period of significant stress on American families. The social safety net was being reduced, mental illness was being deinstitutionalized without adequate community s...
Key Characters
Talking Points
- Why does Voigt never name Momma's mental illness? Is the omission a flaw or a deliberate choice? How does the absence of a diagnosis change the reader's relationship to the character?
- Dicey trusts people who let her help herself and distrusts people who want to help her. Is this a survival skill or a flaw? When does self-reliance become self-isolation?
- Maybeth is labeled 'slow' by every school she attends. The novel argues the label is wrong. But what if it were partially right? Does the novel's defense of Maybeth depend on her actually being intelligent?
- Compare Gram's farm to Eunice's house. Both provide shelter and food. Why does one feel like home and the other like a cage? What is the specific quality that distinguishes them?
- Sammy's anger is the most honest emotional response in the family. Why does the novel treat his anger as both dangerous and necessary?
Notable Quotes
“The children sat in the car. Dicey looked out over the parking lot.”
“They were Tillermans, and Tillermans could take care of themselves.”
“Dicey didn't trust people who wanted to help. She trusted people who let you help yourself.”
Why Read This
Because this is a book about what it means to take care of yourself when no one else will — and about what it means to find people who choose to take care of you. If you have ever felt that the adults in your life do not understand you, or that th...