Homecoming, set around the late 1970s, tells the story of four siblings aged between six and thirteen, whose mother abandons them one summer afternoon in their car next to a Connecticut shopping mall during an aborted road trip to a family member in Bridgeport.

Realizing that their mother is not coming back, and that they cannot go home (as their father walked out before the youngest child was born), the children travel together, mostly on foot, trying to reach Bridgeport.

Thirteen-year-old Dicey Tillerman, and her siblings James (10), Maybeth (9) and Sammy (6), lived in a wooden house out in the dunes in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The novel begins when the Tillerman children find themselves alone in their car, some miles from their home, in a shopping mall parking lot in Peewauket, apparently Connecticut.

Worried that going to the authorities might place her siblings and herself in foster homes and split them up, Dicey decides that the four children must try to continue on to Aunt Cilla themselves, and that hopefully they will find their mother there.

When their money runs out in the center of New Haven, Dicey makes James, Maybeth, and Sammy sleep under a bush in a park, while she watches over them.

The younger children are put into a Catholic summer camp, while Dicey is made to stay home and help Eunice keep house.

Dicey plans to leave Eunice's house alone, in search of a better home for her family with her maternal grandmother, who lives in Crisfield, Maryland.

Attempting to earn money by picking tomatoes, the children find themselves nearly captured by their employer who has apparently taken an interest in Maybeth.

Eventually, Mrs. Tillerman comes to the realization that besides caring deeply for the four children, she can and will offer them a permanent home, despite the emotional and financial fears she has.

In her Afterword to the novel, Voigt explains that although the Tillerman family and the events described are all fictional, the geography of the book is accurate.

A Solitary Blue concerns events in the life of Jeff Greene, a character introduced in Dicey's Song and a central figure in Seventeen Against the Dealer.