Jeff, the main character, is a young man with many complex emotions and experiences. HOMECOMING and DARCY'S SONG were excellent too! I read those books a long time ago, but didn't continue with the series until now. 'This is the third book I have read in the Tillerman Family series by Cynthia Voigt. Narrator Jeff Woodman holds listeners spellbound as he narrates the teenage boy's poignant struggles to accept himself before he can really know others. If Jeff is perfect, maybe his father won't leave like his mother. And the compassion and understanding of this novel are a strong index of what to look for in the rest of the series.Award-winning novelist for young adults, Cynthia Voigt creates this moving tale of a youngster discovering genuine family love.

The answersto the extent that there are anyare as real as the problems themselves. In this story, there is no magic to solve Jeffs problems. The emotional experience of reading it is, suitably, agonizing and terrible, but at the same time lovely. This story delves deep into the emotions of growing up, love and hate, friendship and family, agony and terror.

And a certain family named Tillerman becomes instrumental in teaching Jeff about family ties, inner strength, and trust. And as the Professor struggles to be the father Jeff needs, and as Jeff struggles to pick up the pieces of his life, they settle in the little Maryland town of Crisfield. Out of the experience Jeff learns to understand both his parents better…and to judge better between being loved and being used. In fact, it is a summer of such bitter disillusionment, such shattering betrayal, that it profoundly screws up Jeffs young life. After a summer of basking in her love, the memory of that feeling keeps him going through another yearand the hope of another summer in Charleston.īut the second summer in Gambos house isnt the same.

Then one summer, Melody gets in touch and says she wants Jeff to stay with her and her great-grandmother in their mansion in Charleston. Its heartbreaking to see the effect on a boy of never feeling loved. Jeff spends the next five years driven by a need to stay out of his fathers way, afraid that if he disrupts the Professors routine, he will go away too. Jeff Greene is seven years old when his mother, Melody, leaves him and his tight-lipped, emotionless father, the Professor. And let me tell you, its one moving story. This 1984 Newbery Honor Book, from the acclaimed seven-book Tillerman cycle, fills in the back story of a character introduced in Diceys Song.

A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voigt