Homesick portrays the binding force of family ties, even in the face of enormous emotional pain. Vanderhaeghe's unsophisticated characters drag their emotional baggage with them throughout the novel, allowing repression and projection to prevent any kind of resolution. Three generations are each represented by a single living family member; although Vera's brother, Earl, whose whereabouts we do not know until near the novel's end, is conspicuously present by his absence.

None of these characters is especially likeable. All are lonely. Alec Monkman turned to alcoholism when he was unable to cope with his wife's death twenty years before the novel opens.

Instead of parenting his two children, Alec depended on them — Vera to become the homemaker and substitute mother to Earl, and Earl to accompany him on late-night drunken drives through the countryside. After Vera leaves home, Monkman finds another caretaker in Stutz, who continues...