Homecoming (novel)
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| Author | Cynthia Voigt |
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| Illustrator | Sharon Scotland |
| Cover artist | Mark Harrison |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Tillerman Cycle |
| Genre | Young adult novel |
| Publisher | Ballantine Books |
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Publication date
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1981 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback) |
| Pages | 480 pp (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | (paperback edition) |
| OCLC | 40753537 |
| Followed by | Dicey's Song |
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.
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 (as 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.
Thirteen-year-old Dicey Tillerman, and her brothers James (10) and Sammy (6), and sister Maybeth (9), lived in a wooden house out in the dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The family is poor, their father walked out just before Sammy was born, and only Dicey retains any memory of him. Their mother 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, apparently Connecticut. Momma had driven them away from home, saying that they were going to visit her Aunt Cilla in Bridgeport, Connecticut. At the mall, she parked the car and walked away, instructing the children to do what Dicey told them.
After waiting for a few hours, Dicey begins to understand that Momma is not coming back. Worried that going to the authorities might place her siblings and herself in foster homes, and split them up, Dicey decides that the four children must try to continue on to Aunt Cilla themselves, and that hopefully they will find their mother there.
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