At the beginning of summer, Momma had abandoned them & them later been traced to an asylum where she lay unrecognizing, unknowing. So Dicey Tillerman, her brothers James & Sammy, & her sister Maybeth had spent the summer on their own on a long & difficult journey to find a home with the grandmother they'd never met before. Now that they'd moved in with Gram, their troubles, Dicey hoped, would be over. Dicey had watched over the younger kids & brought them through--now she wanted to be just a little bit selfish, to refinish the old sailboat she'd found in Gram's barn, to earn a little spending money, to adjust to Gram & to her new life in the Chesapeake Bay country that had once been her momma's childhood home. Yet even with the building of new ties & a new life, old problems & sorrows did not go away by themselves. None of the Tillermans, & especially not Dicey, could forget about Momma. Nor could Dicey easily relinquish her need to watch & worry over the three younger children. Though she felt a growing bond with feisty, seemingly eccentric Gram, who talked of reaching out...and letting go, it took a crisis to help Dicey understand what such things might mean. This story is a sequel to Homecoming.