Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant by Anne Tyler takes place mainly in Baltimore between 1924 to 1980. Pearl Cody Tull is on her deathbed, on the verge of death. From there she flashes back to her past, and all the events in her life that brought her to where she is now. Pearl at the age of thirty-one married Beck Tull, a twenty-four year old businessman. Pearl had been worried about ever getting married. Pearl and Beck constantly moved around in their beginning years of their marriage, so much that Pearl lost contact with all of her relatives. The sixth year of their marriage they had their first son, Cody, which make it more difficult to continue moving. Cody developed croup, a serious disease, back then. Pearl's fear of losing Cody, resulted in two more children, Ezra and Jenny. Trouble one Sunday evening in 1944. Beck told Pearl that he did not want to stay married. After he left her life, life grew difficult and somewhat stressful for her. He sent her a check once month to help with expenses, but that was not nearly enough. She got a job as a cashier at the grocery store. Pearl was stressed out from always working and doing housework. She was upset that Beck left and sometimes as a result she acted grouchy and mean, sometimes snapping at the kids. The children were always out playing in the neighborhood, past their bed times and not helping out around the house. Soon Cody and Jenny went off to college. While Ezra worked full time at Mrs. Scarlatti's Restaurant. Pearl was disappointed that he worked there, not attending college. However, he never ended up going to college. When Mrs. Scarletti died she left the restaurant to him. Ezra changed almost everything about that restaurant from new food on the menu, to how it looked inside, even taking out a wall. Eventually he changed the name too. He called it now the Homesick Restaurant because he thought it was a place where people could go to get meals that reminded them of back home, that they had not had in a while and missed.
