It was not long after noon but it was dark and raining outside, so there was not much to see. Marcia thought about what she would do when she got into Union Station. She would take a streetcar to the Putneys, and she would say she was looking for a room. She was sure they would be good to her, because strangers were always good to you. The light rattle of the rain on the coach roof made her drowsy, and she thought about telephone operating, being a salesgirl in May’s, being a secretary with the touch system, and presently she was in a half-dream reciting with Mr. Putney, only he changed into a very old man, so she had the platform all to herself and was taking all the parts in a play called “The Lion and the Mouse.” Lena and Florrie and Papa and Aunt Lois were all there in the front row gazing worshipfully at her.

The rain came louder, beating across the window. Marcia rubbed a spot on the pane and saw they were already at Union Falls, miles and miles from London Junction. The rain covered the spot, and Marcia took her forefinger and wrote “MARCIA WILLARD” across the foggy pane.

Questions for Discussion

1. In his foreword Tim Page writes: “My Home Is Far Away is one of the very few examples of a book written for adults, with an adult command of the language, that maintains the vantage point of a hungry, serious child throughout. It might be likened to a memoir that has been penned not with the usual tranquility of distance but rather with the sense that everything happening to the characters is happening right now, without any promise of eventual escape, without any assurance that childhood, too, shall pass away.” Do you agree that this unique approach by the author gives My Home Is Far Away a certain power? Can you think of some examples where Powell’s adult command of the language combined with a child’s sense of immediacy had an especially strong impact on you?

2. Like most of Dawn Powell’s books, My Home is Far Away did not sell well when it was first published; it went out of print quickly, remained out of print for three generations, and did not receive major critical acclaim until long after Powell’s death in 1965. The New York Times Book Review did not hail it “one of the permanent masterpieces of childhood” until 1995, and Newsday didn’t write “a book this good can be only one thing: a classic” until 2004. Numerous reviewers have said that Powell was a writer ahead of her time. What aspects of Powell’s approach in My Home is Far Away — a book set during the early 1900s and published in 1944 — seem more in line with the sensibilities and conventions of our time than of Powell’s?

3. Chapter 28 (this page) begins: “ ‘I feel sorry for her,’ Florrie said one day, in troubled tones.” She’s speaking of the girls’ stepmother, Idah Hawkins. Do you feel sorry for Idah? If so, in what ways and why? To what extent is the girls’ father, Harry Willard, ultimately responsible for the cruelty they suffer at Idah’s hands?