One day in early summer, Dicey Tillermans mother begins a trip with her children in their battered station wagon to see their Aunt Cilla in Bridgeport, Connecticut. When they have driven about half the distance between their home in Provincetown and Bridgeport, Momma stops the car and gets out, telling the three younger children, James, …
Summary Chapter 1 One night, Dicey s Momma wakes her four children up in the middle of the night, has them pack clothes and food into paper bags, and begins driving with them from their ramshackle house on the dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts, to her Aunt Cillas house in Bridgeport, Connecticut. They stop inexplicably at …
Summary Chapter 3 On their second day of travel, Dicey wakes up from a dream of Aunt Cillas house, and James greets the morning with his usual words: “Its still true.” Sammy attacks James when James expresses doubt that Momma will be waiting for them at Aunt Cillas, and Dicey pulls her pugnacious younger brother …
Summary Chapter 5 On their second morning in the park, James states that he feels too ill to travel. While Dicey suspects that he is malingering, she decides that concern for his health is paramount and that they must stay. It is the weekend, and the park begins to fill with people. Edie comes to …
Summary Chapter 7 After waking the next morning and deciding that they must return to Route 1, a less pleasant but more efficient road than the roads near the shore, Dicey finds herself wondering at a poem on a gravestone, which describes the grave as home. After reflecting on her own life and the restlessness …
Summary Chapter 9 As Dicey knocks on the door of Aunt Cillas house, she realizes they are completely empty-handed: they no longer even have a map. The house, however, is empty, and the children settle uneasily on the steps to wait. When Maybeth asks Dicey why Momma left, Dicey does her best to explain that …
Summary Chapter 11 At Eunices, Dicey finds herself lulled by a numbing routine of housework. The policeman visits Dicey and shows her pictures of the unidentified dead found that summer, and since Momma is not among them, they are reasonably certain that she is still alive. James seems happy at the school camp, where the …
Summary Chapter 1 On the bus to New York, Dicey finds herself contemplating the concept of home. She realizes that she has long since given up the hope of finding home, and instead is merely looking for a place where she and her siblings can stay and be themselves. She realized that they were not …
Summary Chapter 3 The next morning, Dicey finds Sammy crouching by himself at the edge of the lawn. When she approaches him, he confesses that he had a dream that the other children had abandoned him, and then asks Dicey why she had planned to travel alone. Dicey tries to explain, pointing out that she …
Summary Chapter 5 The next day, Dicey decides that they must earn money picking tomatoes, despite the fact that she has money stored away. When the Tillermans see a sign, they walk up a long and dusty driveway to a run-down farmhouse, beside which a vicious dog is snarling and slobbering. When the owner, Rudyard, …