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.”
Short 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.
Detailed Summary
The Tillerman children sit in a car in a parking lot. Their mother has gone into the mall and has not come back. Dicey, the eldest at thirteen, knows before the younger ones do that their mother is not returning. She has been watching Momma deteriorate for months — the confusion, the silence, the fo...