[A Solitary Blue] is the story of Jeff Greene, the guitar-playing high school boy Dicey Tillerman meets in Dicey's Song (1982)—but the connection isn't made until near the end. The story begins, matter-of-factly but with Kramer vs. Kramer pathos, when Jeff at seven finds his mother Melody's note explaining that she loves him but had to leave him to help the world's less fortunate and "make things better." Jeff is left with his stiff, expressionless father...

[With Dicey's Song, Cynthia Voigt] proves that heroines of young adult fiction can be mature, considerate, even exemplary, and still seem quite real. Dicey Tillerman, the heroine of Dicey's Song, is not just good, she is strong, like a birch sapling, and it is Voigt's skill in convincing us of that strength that makes her seem so real. (p. 8) Of course the journey [that began in Homecoming] isn't over once Gram's house has been reached. Dicey still must play the leader, ma...

Mrs. Voigt has a nice way with language, blunt, taut and precise. She uses small but powerful images that rise above the ordinary yet still remain within the grasp of a juvenile audience. She keeps her distance and sustains an objectivity that prevents the story from falling into melodrama. "Dicey's Song" … is a series of movements and contrasts. But under it all there's a goal of harmony that's eventually realized as Dicey learns what to reach out for and what to g...

[Dicey's Song] details Dicey's settlement into adolescence and a new life with Gram…. The story is a perceptive exposition of two strong personalities, Dicey and Gram, neither of whom is perfect but both of whom learn powerful lessons in reaching out and accepting love…. The vividness of Dicey is striking; Voigt has plumbed and probed her character inside out to fashion a memorable protagonist. Unlike most sequels, this outdoes [Homecoming] by being more fully realized and conseq...