Geography
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. However, some of the places mentioned are either fictional or deliberately or unintentionally misnamed.
- Peewauket, Connecticut: The town in which the children are abandoned. Although no place with this name exists, there is a town near Stonington, Connecticut, named Pawcatuck (pronounced Paw-kit-tuk, with the accent on the Paw), which is probably the place Voigt refers to.
- Rockland State Park, Connecticut: There is a Rockland State Park, but it is ninety miles from the coast and so is not the shoreline park the children stay in for a few days after James hurts his head in a fall. This park is likely to be Rocky Neck State Park, which fits the description and location.
- Landing Neck Road, Crisfield, Maryland: While Crisfield is a real town and the descriptions of it appear accurate, there is no Landing Neck Road, although there are run-down farms in the area described.
Read more about this topic: Homecoming (novel)
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Yet America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)