Homecoming is a young adult novel by American children's author Cynthia Voigt. It is the first of seven novels in the Tillerman Cycle. It was adapted into a for-TV film.
Plot introduction
Homecoming , set in the very early 1980s, tells the story of four siblings aged between six and thirteen, whose mother abandons them one summer afternoon in their car next to a Connecticut shopping mall during an aborted road trip to a family member in Bridgeport. Realizing that their mother is not coming back, and that they cannot go home (their father walked out before the youngest child was born), the children travel together, mostly on foot, trying to reach Bridgeport. There, they hope to find their missing mother at the home of a relative they have never met. The children find themselves on a journey that is emotional as well as literal - during their weeks on the road their adventures and the people they meet along the way help them to find out more about who they are and what is important to them, as well as to cope with the loss of their mother and to understand society's reaction to her poverty, isolation, mental illness and the fact that she was an unmarried mother of four.
Plot summary
For a 13 year old girl named Dicey Tillerman, and her brothers James , Sammy, and sister Maybeth (), home has always been a little wooden house out in the dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The children lived with their mother, and use her maiden name – Tillerman – because their parents never married. The family is poor and on the margins of society. Their father walked out on their mother just before Sammy was born, and only Dicey retains any memory of him. Their mother – whom the children call Momma – is a "sad, moon-faced woman", who worked herself too hard, physically and emotionally, to take care of her four children and make ends meet. The novel begins when the Tillerman children find themselves alone in their car, some miles from their home, in a shopping mall parking lot in Peewauket, Connecticut. The night before, Momma had bundled the kids into the car and driven them away from home, saying that they were going to visit their mother's Aunt Cilla in Bridgeport. At the Peewauket mall, she parked the car and walked away, instructing the children to do what Dicey told them.
At 13, Dicey is used to being the responsible member of the family; she began caring for her younger siblings before age 7, when she was in charge of feeding and bathing baby Sammy. After waiting a few hours in the car, she begins to understand that something must have happened to Momma, and that she is not coming back to the car. She knows that Momma had intended to take them to Aunt Cilla's house, in Bridgeport – an apparently wealthy relative that they have never met but hear from by letter every Christmas. Worried that going to the authorities might mean foster homes for herself and her siblings, Dicey decides that the four children must try to continue on to Aunt Cilla's house themselves, and that hopefully they will find their mother there. While in their heart of hearts, Dicey and to some extent James do not believe she will be found there, they cling to the hope, not least because this persuades six-years-old Sammy to cooperate on the difficult journey.
Dicey and her brothers and sister set off on foot, as they do not have enough money for a bus. Dicey, who quickly realizes that the journey is longer and more arduous than she had initially understood, takes on the role of a substitute parent, and becomes responsible for her siblings' welfare. She takes charge of their meager finances, which they need to buy food - she earns money, whenever necessary (including STEALING). Dicey comes to understand more fully how difficult things must have been for Momma, and how she must have slowly lost hope and, eventually, her sanity.
The children's journey is a long one, both physically and emotionally. They often go hungry. There are some frightening brushes with danger. When their money runs out in the center of New Haven, Dicey makes James, Maybeth and Sammy sleep under a bush in a park, while she watches over them. They are rescued by a college student, Windy, who feeds them and offers them shelter. The next day, Windy's roommate Stewart gives the children a ride in his car the rest of the way to Bridgeport, dropping them off outside what they hope is their Aunt Cilla's house, but without waiting to see what happens to them.
At Aunt Cilla's house in Bridgeport, Dicey and her family learn some uncomfortable truths: firstly, that their mother is not there, and that Aunt Cilla herself is recently deceased. Her middle-aged, unmarried daughter Eunice, a devout Catholic woman fond of TV dinners and collectible china figurines and who remains living in her mother's house, is reluctant to be burdened with the Tillerman children. She had plans to enter a convent and taking in the homeless children will put an end to her dreams of becoming a nun. There are moral difficulties for Eunice, too. The children are not Catholic, and their parents were unmarried; both these facts cause Eunice problems. Reluctantly, with the advice of her "counsellor," a Catholic priest, she overcomes some of her initial objections, and takes them in. The priest, Father Joseph, contacts the local police, who set about trying to trace the children's mother.
The younger children are put into a Catholic summer camp, while Dicey is made to stay home and help Eunice keep house. The atmosphere in the house is tense, as Eunice's reluctant guardianship forces the children to express overt gratitude, and to be quiet, polite and as unobtrusive as possible. Eunice is unequal to the task of raising or even dealing with the four children, and her obsession with expressing humility and gratitude is stifling. Dicey, recognizing that Cousin Eunice's home is probably not a good home for her family, starts to do odd jobs around town in addition to her household chores, to secretly earn money in case she needs to travel and find an alternative home.
Unfortunately, adding to the discomfort that they feel at Eunice's, Maybeth and Sammy do not fare well at summer camp. Sammy gets into fights and is unruly and difficult when at home. Maybeth, who is extremely shy and has considerable learning difficulties, becomes withdrawn. Cousin Eunice believes she is "retarded", and that Sammy is unmanageable and is "shaming" her. James, ostensibly doing well in his classes for gifted children, becomes distant from his family, more and more taking refuge in books.
Father Joseph suggests to Dicey that the best way forward is to split the family up: Sammy would go to a foster home, and Maybeth would go to a school for retarded children. The children's difficulties are compounded, when, after some weeks, the police locate the children's mother, who has been picked up in Boston, MA. The children are informed that their mother is completely catatonic in a state psychiatric hospital, without much chance of recovery. Any dream they harbored of being reunited with Momma and starting a new life with her is shattered.
Frightened for her family's fate, Dicey makes plans to leave Eunice's house alone, in search of a better home for her family. In one of Cousin Eunice's talks with Father Joseph, she overheard talk about a grandmother, her mother's mother, who apparently lives on a farm near Crisfield, Maryland. Dicey does not hold out much hope: her grandmother seems to have a reputation for being eccentric: she does not respond, for example, to letters about the children sent by Cousin Eunice and apparently screams when a local priest visits her to find out about the children's mother. However, Dicey does not believe there is an alternative to this last chance, and taking the money she has earned in secret, she leaves a note for her brothers and sister and tries to sneak away to see if the farm would be a good home for her family. James finds her out, however, and at the last minute, her family prevents her from going alone. The Tillerman family finds themselves on the road again in search of a home; this ends the first part of the novel.
The second journey, like the first, is hard and occasionally fraught with danger. Attempting to earn money picking tomatoes, the children find themselves nearly captured by their supposed employer, a Mr Rudyard, a threatening and emotionally unstable farmer who has apparently taken an unhealthy interest in pretty Maybeth. Mr Rudyard lives on a rundown farm in southern Maryland. In a frantic attempt to escape his clutches, the children are helped by Will and Claire, owners of a traveling circus. Will and Claire drive the children to Crisfield, but unlike Windy and Stewart, offer to stick around to make sure that the children are safe. Against Will's advice and wishes, but with his understanding, Dicey decides she needs to go alone to her grandmother's farm to see for herself if it is safe for her family. Will tells Dicey to contact him if they ever need help.
Abigail Tillerman, the children's grandmother, has a reputation in the local town for extreme eccentricity. She lives entirely alone on a run-down farm without a phone some miles from Crisfield. Nevertheless, Dicey leaves her younger siblings in the center of Crisfield, and heads out on foot to her grandmother's farm.
Dicey's first meeting with her grandmother is not pleasant. The grandmother is not welcoming, and demands Dicey tell her what she thinks about death. She tells Dicey that the children cannot live there and that she can shelter them for one night only. However, Dicey quickly realizes that the farm would be a good place for her family, and that they have nowhere else to go. Dicey refuses t
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