What I Carry

“You will never, in all your life, meet a person who packs a better suitcase than I do, and I’ll tell you right now, the secret is not organization—it is simplification. […] My packing credentials were passed to me from my namesake and honed since my birth, straight into foster care and never adopted. The longest I’ve lived in any house is eleven months, and now I am seventeen years old, so you do the math.”

The novel’s opening passage introduces the protagonist and establishes her direct and jaded narrative tone. Muiriel’s suitcase-packing skills connect to both the novel’s title and to the emotional weight that she carries as someone who has spent her whole life in foster care. Over the course of the novel, packing and unpacking grant insight into the protagonist’s healing process and her relationships with other characters.

“Joellen planted the seed of Muir’s wisdom that grew into the truth that comforts me now: he lived nearly all his life more at home outside than in, and I understand why. Every house I live in smells different; the rules and beds and people are never the same. But one walk outside and I am always home, beneath the same sky. Alone is not lonely. Nothing to miss, nothing and no one to wish or search for. John Muir set me free.”

The writings of the naturalist John Muir bring the protagonist comfort, developing the theme of Finding Solace in Nature. Like her namesake, Muiriel feels “more at home outside than in” at the start of the novel. Eventually, she finds a house that feels like home thanks to Francine.

“‘Here,’ she said, and put a small metal thing in my hand. An Allen wrench. ‘In case you get lonely,’ she said.”

This scene introduces an important supporting character and a key symbol. Muiriel’s reluctance to part from her young foster sister, Zola, demonstrates the protagonist’s ability to form attachments to other people even though she tries to avoid them. The Allen wrench symbolizes connection. They pass the item back and forth throughout the story as a way of comforting one another.