12 October 2009 HOMECOMING by Cynthia Voigt, Atheneum, 1981

"'Yes,' said Frog, reaching for a cookie, 'we need willpower.'

"'What is willpower?' asked Toad.

"'Willpower is trying hard not to do something you really want to do,' said Frog.

"'You mean like trying hard not to eat all these cookies?' asked Toad.

"'Right,' said Frog."

I've stopped reading for the moment at page 142.  There are 372 pages in this mass-market edition of HOMECOMING.  That means that I have already consumed three-eighths of the book.  Writing about the book for a while will hopefully make the reading last a little bit longer. 

"'He's not watching us,' Maybeth said to Dicey.

"'I don't want anyone to know who we are, or that we're alone.'

"'We're not alone,' Maybeth answered.

"'She means without adults,' James said.

"'But he let us drink the water.  He didn't seem to notice us much.'

"'You can't tell,' Dicey said.  'You can't tell who to trust.'

"'Yes I can,' Maybeth said, but not to quarrel.  She said it simply, as if it was her name.

"Dicey smiled at her and took her hand.  'Well I can't,' she said."

It is the passage of eight years since last reading HOMECOMING that has permitted my forgetting enough of the details to not recall in advance of turning the page what is around each single corner.  Like that bowl of cookies, I am going to be really sad to reach the end and have to wait however many years to once again have a similar "new" experience of meeting the four Tillerman kids: Dicey, James, Maybeth, and Sammy.

For those of you unfamiliar with it, HOMECOMING is the first book in a seven-book series by Cynthia Voigt.  I was turned onto the book when I first went to work in the bookstore fifteen years ago.  I happily consumed all seven books like there was no tomorrow.  The second book in the series (which is in so many ways the second half of the initial story) was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1983, the third book was awarded a Newbery Honor, and the fourth book -- which really serves as a prequel to the series -- ranks right up there with THE WEDNESDAY WARS in its showing on an achingly personal level how the Vietnam War forever altered the underlying fabric of America.

"'It does matter, James,' said Stewart.'

"'Why?  We all die anyway,' James said.

"'Sure, but you can see to it that you like yourself when you die,' Stewart answered.  'You can be sure you don't hurt anybody while you're alive.  Especially, you can be sure you don't hurt yourself.'"

HOMECOMING is the story of the four Tillerman kids from Cape Cod, whose poor and troubled mother packs them up in the car one morning with the intention of driving to her elderly aunt's house in Bridgeport, but then abandons the children in a mall parking lot just inside Connecticut.  After a day of waiting for her return, it falls to thirteen year-old Dicey -- who fears that talking with authorities might result in their being separated from one another -- to keep them alive and lead them by foot to Great Aunt Cilla's house in Bridgeport.  When things don't work out there as hoped -- to say the least -- Dicey must then lead them further on, to the very place where they might well be able to learn how her mother became who she is.

HOMECOMING is an extraordinary read because it is a survival story in which we come to know so much of the inner workings of each of these four children who are four real individuals.  There are potential dangers to be faced that are personified in the various adult characters the siblings meet, and the story is groundbreaking in its subtle explorations of what drives these adult characters.  In addition, Voigt time and again provides exceptionally intimate descriptions of the places -- the beaches, the roads, the houses, the small cities -- that the children experience while on their quest for a home.    

"If you took home to mean where you rested content and never wanted to go anywhere else, then Dicey had never had a home.  The ocean always made her restless; so even Provincetown, even their own remembered kitchen, wasn't home.  That was why Dicey always ran along the sand beside the ocean, as if she had to race the waves.  The ocean wasn't home, then, and neither was anyplace else." 

Even the third time through, I am holding my breath as I approach the last pages of the story, worrying if and how it might actually work out for the quartet of siblings.  And while I am truly sad to see the empty plate, I can take solace in the fact that the second book -- DICEY'S SONG -- offers me another whole batch of cookies that are as good as this one was.