The story begins with the death of Jeremy's mother and the funeral arrangements that needed to be handled by his two out-of-town sisters, Amanda and Laura.

Amanda is unsympathetic to her brother's inability to come out of his shell, and attempts to persuade him to leave the boarding house and live with her and her sister in Richmond.

When John returns to his wife, Mary and Darcy are left rather crushed and somewhat destitute, with no options but to remain in their boarding house room.

Mary becomes anxious about her financial situation and the difficulty of raising Darcy under these conditions, but Jeremy and the other boarders help and support her in various ways.

"[2] Anne Tyler commented in a 1992 interview with Patricia Willrich that Celestial Navigation was far more difficult to write than her previous four novels, because she had finally learned to delve deeper into her characters and to rework her drafts multiple times.