Jackie says, "This book will make you think about consequences and choices in your own life even as the characters' lives unfold in front of you."

 

This stunning, break-out achievement has been hailed by Emma Donoghue, bestselling author of Room, for presenting “passion and addiction, guilt and damage, all the beautiful mess of family life. Carry the One will lift readers off their feet and bear them along on its eloquent tide.”

 

Carry the One begins in the hours following Carmen’s wedding reception, when a car filled with stoned, drunk, and sleepy guests accidently hits and kills a girl on a dark, country road. For the next twenty-five years, those involved, including Carmen and her brother and sister, connect and disconnect and reconnect with each other and their victim. As one character says, “When you add us up, you always have to carry the one.”

Through friendships and love affairs; marriage and divorce; parenthood, holidays, and the modest tragedies and joys of ordinary days, Carry the One shows how one life affects another and how those who thrive and those who self-destruct are closer to each other than we’d expect. Deceptively short and simple in its premise, this novel derives its power and appeal from the author’s beautifully precise use of language; her sympathy for her very recognizable, flawed characters; and her persuasive belief in the transforming forces of time and love.

Jackie says:
"This books follows the lives of a group of family and friends through 25 years, starting with a wedding and a drunken ride on a dark country lane that resulted in the death of a little girl.  The 'one' they all carry is the specter of that girl, the responsibility and guilt , and the book is the story of how that effected their lives.  One becomes a fierce liberal activist, one becomes a famous painter who can't show her best work, another becomes an addict who is obsessed by the child's mother.  Then there's the conflicted nurse turned model, the songwriter who finds his success tainted with the tragedy, and more.  This is a group character study of the process of time, what it does to us, what we do with it, and how we (humans) deal with it.  What really moves the book is the magnificent writing--very visual yet full of mystery and shadows.  This book will make you think about consequences and choices in your own life even as the characters' lives unfold in front of you."