Rating: 4/5
You seem to have the strength and resilience to go on. Isn’t that what sanity is?
Nothing mattered out here. Nobody talked and nobody listened. The waves went past them, maybe each one different, maybe the same wave over and over again. Who knew which? Who cared?
I failed them. I let them go. I told them to go. I won’t have that responsibility again. Not to fail again.
The story opens when Liza Tillerman abandons her four children in a Connecticut car park during a state of severe mental distress. Thirteen-year-old Dicey decides not to report to the police or other authorities about their situation, believing that they would be taken to an orphanage of some kind. She resolutely takes up the responsibility to journey with her three younger siblings, James aged ten, Maybeth aged nine, and Sammy aged six, to Bridgeport, the home of her supposedly closest relative, Great-Aunt Cilla. The journey will take them a total of around a month, leaving them exhausted and on the brink of starvation.
Dicey tackles serious problems when she reaches the centre of New Haven with no money. She struggles with trying to find work while still supporting her young family. One rainy night she is rescued from near mental disaster when two college students, Windy and Stewart, take her and her siblings in for the night and drive them the rest of the way to Bridgeport the next day.
But Dicey’s problems don’t end here. At Bridgeport, they learn of the recent death of their great-aunt, discovering only her fussy middle-aged daughter Eunice at her home. Although she tries to house them, it is obvious that Eunice Logan does not want the four children with her. During her time at Bridgeport, Dicey’s mother is located at a mental hospital in Massachusetts. It has been reported that she is in a severe state of catatonia. It’s now that Dicey realises that her story has only just begun.
On eventually discovering the whereabouts of her mother’s mother—Great-Aunt Cilla’s sister, Abigail—Dicey journeys with Sammy, James and Maybeth to the town of Crisfield, in Maryland. The journey there is just as eventful as their trek to Bridgeport: the Tillermans experience the cruelty of their potential kidnapper Mr Rudyard and the rescue of Will Hawkins from Hawkins Circus, the latter of whom will remain a good friend to Dicey and her siblings throughout the book.
At long last, the Tillermans come across the secluded, tumbledown home of their feisty grandmother Ab, who will eventually agree to let them stay with her. Dicey has learnt many important things about her past, future, and who she is personally across this period of her life. Sometime she will learn to accept the family situation: her unmarried parents, the father who walked out on them before Sammy was born, her insane mother, and the possibly inherited insanity of her sister Maybeth. There is a running theme in the book of belonging: Dicey knows that while her life in Provincetown before her mother abandoned them was not always happy, it was home; and that Eunice’s house in Bridgeport or Will’s circus could never be that. The question is, is her grandmother’s ramshackle farm home?
I really enjoyed this book. The plot was very cleverly thought out, and the style of writing was different but exciting. I’m looking forward to reading the second book in the Tillerman Cycle,
Dicey’s Song.