Creative Inspirations: The Tillerman Cycle by Cynthia Voigt

Those who love reading from a young age tend to love epic fantasy and adventure tales that transport them to other worlds with magic, creatures, heroes, and villains. I’ve never been one to gravitate towards books with dragons on the cover. I always loved grounded realistic stories where the adventures are real and the characters are kids you could be friends with.

After reading my way through Goosebumps, The Boxcar Children, and the Baby-sitters Club shelves of my local library, I began to eventually branch out to other stories, those with a synopsis that fell into this realistic category. I wanted coming of age books about groups of kids who were introspective outcasts with unique interests.

Discovering Homecoming

One afternoon at the library, I came across a book called Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt. The back cover synopsis read that it was about four siblings who are abandoned by their mother while out shopping one day. Once they realize that she isn’t coming back, they get out of their old beat up car where she left them and begin to walk to a distant relative’s house in another state.

Not long before picking up this book, I had written a story where my brother, sisters, and I become separated by our parents on the way home from the beach and had to walk all the way home from Virginia to Pennsylvania with only a few dollars, sleeping in the cornfields I would see on our eight-hour drive to our annual summer vacation spot and surviving on pizza bagels, which I’d never eaten but had always wanted to try.

My story was full of plot holes that neglected to explain why we didn’t just wait for our parents to find us or call the police. But the point was to have an adventure and come up with ways to survive on the road and get us all home in one piece.

The beginning of The Tillerman Cycle

The story of the Tillerman siblings made a lot more sense. Their stakes were higher, and they were so much more street smart than I had because they had to be.

Abandoned by their father years before and raised by an unstable mother forced them to become resourceful in order to survive. Most of that weight fell to the oldest, Dicey, the practical, responsible caretaker. She made sure that her brainy brother, James, her fragile sister, Maybeth, and her rambunctious baby brother Sammy had food, clothes, shelter, and most of all, stability in her. Each kid brings their own personality and skillset to the ground, and they use it to stick together and make it from one day to the next, often narrowly escaping dangerous circumstances.

Their resourcefulness was so inspiring to me as was their work ethic. And while it’s tough and often full of setbacks, the kids eventually make it to their grandmother’s farm in Maryland. There, they find the unorthodox stability that they’ve always craved.

“I ran,” Sammy boasted, “I ran so fast – it’s hard to run with a big bag. Nobody caught me.”

“I’m glad of that,” dicey said, reaching to pat his tinged hair, “I don’t know how we could have gotten you back if you’d been caught.”

“Would you get me back?” Sammy asked.

“Of course. What do you think?”

“I don’t know,” Sammy said.

“We’re all together, aren’t we?” Dicey asked him. “We’d just have to get you back. But it would be hard, really hard – so I’m glad.”

Dicey’s Song

Book 2, Dicey’s Song, shows that the Tillerman kids have adjusted to life with their Gram. They find ways to be useful and help pull their weight on the farm so as not to burden this elderly woman, and they all thrive from the hard work and bond as a family.

But Dicey has trouble letting go of her role as the caretaker, and it makes her feel useless until Gram gets word that the kids’ mother has been found and is dying in the hospital. As Gram and Dicey rush there to say their goodbyes, she realizes that she is a vital part of the family but that she no longer has to carry the full weight of that burden on her shoulders, allowing her to branch out into her own passion: restoring an old boat in Gram’s barn.

“She remembered Momma’s eyes looking glad or worried, or laughing. She remembered Momma bringing Sammy home from the hospital. Momma was tired, then, and worried about how to take care of them; but she was still glad to have Sammy, and James and Maybeth and Dicey too. Momma loved her children. You could tell in the way her hands rested on their heads.”

The middle books

The next four books in the series pivot to feature other characters in the Tillerman kids’ lives. The only other one I remember seeing as a kid was Book 3: A Solitary Blue, featuring Jeff, the boy who will eventually become Dicey’s boyfriend and beloved friend to all of the kids, and his dysfunctional relationship with his parents.

“You know, I never call you anything.” He didn’t look up.

The clam voice answered: Thomas noticed that, years ago. I’m not the Daddy type, or Pop – I can understand your difficulty.

Jeff looked up.

“When you think of me, do you call me anything? More than just he?”

“Yeah. Professor,” Jeff answered, with a grin.

His father chewed, “Yes. That would do.”

Book 4

The Runner backtracks several years to tell of the kids’ uncle, Bullet, who pursues his dream of being a track star until Vietnam sweeps him away from those dreams and leads to his untimely death.

“On the back porch he pulled off the Oxford shirt and khakis he’d put on for dinner, stripping down to the shorts and t-shirt he wore underneath. He was angry, good and angry. He was mad, good and mad. Bad and mad, bad mad…His feet picked up the rhythm of his anger.”

Book 5

Come a Stranger is the story of Mina Smiths (yes, that’s plural – Smiths), Dicey’s best friend, who is forced to weigh her options after getting kicked out of ballet school.

“What I just said, Mina, is that you’re awkward and ungainly. That’s what I meant, and that’ what I said. Although, you don’t see many black ballerinas –“

“And what about the Harlem Dance Theater?” Mina demanded. If she’d talked like that at home, her mother would have stopped her mouth. But she wasn’t at home.”

Book 6

In Sons from Afar, we see James and Sammy, now a few years older, and the boys team up to try to track down their long lost father.

“James had tried to think things out, figure out why, what there was about him. He knew he didn’t fit in. He was wrong, somehow, and he wanted to be all right, but it was almost as if there was some secret nobody would tell him, so he was always going to be stuck outside.”

Book 7

Seventeen Against the Dealer brings us back to Dicey who is now 21 and trying to start her own boating business. But a series of unfortunate events threatens this dream.

“All the long afternoon they sang and talked, and ate, and Dicey didn’t think about her boats, the ones she was working on or the ones she was dreaming about, except once, when they came to the line in Momma’s old song that said, “bring me a boat and will carry two.” She could see that boat then, as real as if she had already built it.”

Favorite elements of The Tillerman Cycle

One great thing about The Tillerman Cycle is how deep they are. The characters are so reflective, assessing each other’s words and actions, trying to understand how the others see the world and how it differs from their own worldview. And these deep dives into these diverse characters make you sit back and think, “Oh, I’m like that,” or “That reminds me of someone I know.”

I love how failure is such a big theme throughout the series. Every character fails along the way. But failure is never the stopping point. It’s a quarter turn in another direction. That’s not to say that the failures are dismissive. It’s disheartening and defeating, but it doesn’t break them or the reader’s faith in them. And it doesn’t mean they’re failures.

The Tillerman kids especially know that moving forward is crucial to their survival. Their hard work doesn’t always pay off, but it keeps them alive. They see how, when their mother gives up, she literally wastes away to nothing, and they refuse to do that, mainly for each other’s sake.

The Tillerman Cycle is also way ahead of its time. Though written in the 80’s, the series features people of color, gay characters, and diversity that you just didn’t see back then. Voigt isn’t afraid to write about dark topics or about characters who don’t fit the mold of the standard middle grade or YA story.

Mina’s story in particular feels so authentic in its portrayal of a young girl of color that you can tell that Voigt did her homework and made sure not to present her as a caricature. I’ve never seen a cast of characters more fleshed out in an ongoing storyline. They learn and grow but ultimately remain their individual selves as we first meet them.

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Dicey Tillerman

Dicey is my favorite character for many reasons. I can identify with her as the oldest of four kids, the one who has to act as a surrogate parent when we’re out on our own.

Like me, she feels a strong sense of responsibility and a determination to do things on her own. She’s practical, levelheaded, and bad at sharing her emotions. But her internal monologue tells the reader that she feels very deeply, and this is what drives her to pull herself together and get all four kids to where they’re all going, both together and separately.

Inspiring me creatively

The switch in perspectives in the middle of the series is also such a smart and interesting approach to writing a series. Voigt selects these very small characters and expands their stories and personalities into well-rounded individuals with their own lives, goals, and backstories.

Though I only read the first three books in the series as a kid ,the idea of changing perspectives from Dicey to Jeff between books 2 and 3 really stuck with me. And it inspired me to create a middle grade series featuring a different main character in each book.

Rereading The Tillerman Cycle as an adult helped me to understand how sophisticated the storyline is. When I reread old books from my childhood, I tend to trivialize the events and look down on the characters as children. But with the Tillerman kids, I’m continually impressed by them.

Their ignorance doesn’t inspire any metaphorical head petting from me. Instead, I worry for them and root for them simultaneously. I’m there for all of the successes and the many failures. And I continue learn along with them, allowing them to continue pressing forward rather than wish for them to be saved by some external force. Because I know they can get to where they’re trying to go, even if the path isn’t straight and narrow.

The Tillerman Cycle is one of those series that made me want to write my own books. It’s always stuck with me, and in my query letters, I always credit Voigt as an influence on my writing goals, even if my style differs from hers. It lets publishers know what I’m trying to accomplish in my writing and how they can guide me there if they decide to take a chance on me.

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