WHAT I CARRY has recieved a beautiful review from BOOKPAGE MAGAZINE, our third starred review! I am so grateful to BOOKPAGE, Penguin Random House Books, and Folio Literary for letting me tell Muiriel’s story. Here’s the full review:
“Jennifer Longo’s What I Carry is narrated by Muiriel, Muir for short, a resilient young woman born an orphan at the John Muir Medical Center (for which she was named) in California. Almost 18 and wise beyond her years, she’s about to age out of the foster-care system.
Compared to other foster kids, Muir feels she has certain advantages. She’s white, she doesn’t agonize over memories of lost family members, and she’s had the same social worker for nearly her entire life. It was kindhearted Joellen who once gave her a book called The Wilderness World of John Muir, a collection of writings by the great naturalist. The volume inspired Muir to hone her survival skills amid the unpredictable world of foster care. Carrying with her only the bare essentials, she lives out of her suitcase and doesn’t own a phone. Eleven months is the longest she’s ever stayed with a foster family, and where exit strategies are concerned, she’s a pro.
After Muir moves into a foster home on an island not far from Seattle, her outlook changes. She connects with her foster mother, Francine, and befriends Kira, a talented young Japanese American artist. When she meets a fellow nature lover named Sean at her forestry internship, she finds herself falling hard—both for him and for her new life. But staying still has never come easy to Muir, and as the novel progresses, she wrestles with her instinct to run.
Longo has a gift for arresting details: “Slamming doors are birdsong in a foster house—always there,” Muir observes, “a kind of background music.” Longo writes with warmth, humor and a flair for good old-fashioned storytelling, spinning subplots involving Kira and other supporting characters to create a beautifully realized tale of a teen’s search for her place in the world.
*This is the third starred review for this title.”