“Moody and evocative . . . These stories are thematically linked by the human connection to nature and provide an unforgettable dive into the resilience required to persevere through hardship and oppression.”—Atlanta Journal Constitution, A Top 10 Southern Book of 2025
“Moore’s talent is unmistakable.”—Ms. Magazine, Best Book of July
“Remarkable…. [an] intense focus on family ties, vivid Southern setting and confident narrative voice.”—Washington Post, Best Paperback in July
“Compelling…. The settings of Moore’s stories act as characters in their own right, their tangled pasts forming the backdrop for daily living.”—Austin Chronicle
“An intimate, meticulously crafted, and tenderly rendered tour through the lives of Black women, men, and children seeking solid ground in a mercurial American southland….A regional relief map of the human heart.”—Kirkus, Starred Review
“Moore masterfully captures the intergenerational experiences of Black men, women, and families, weaving tales of resistance, connection, and self-discovery. With compassion and depth, she explores the tension between longing for home and finding freedom elsewhere. A stunning debut by a writer whose voice is both vital and unforgettable.”—Booklist
“Poetic…. Permeating these eleven expertly told stories of contemporary Black life in the American Deep South is a cautious optimism that acknowledges the damages of the past.”—Necessary Fiction
“Her spectacular debut collection, Make Your Way Home, encompasses much more than just keen attention to place. The Black men, women, and families orbiting these stories are reckoning with generational inheritance and trauma, romantic and erotic love, ideas of faith and freedom.” —Poets & Writers
“Transportive…. the author impresses with her meticulous research…. This solid collection has much to admire.”—Publishers Weekly
?Moore tenderly writes with the precision of a surgeon’s tool, marking out the cleanest of cuts, opening the reader to redefine the capabilities and realities of these characters’ homes and of our own.”—Clarion Ledger
“Beautifully written.”—The Root, A Most Anticipated Black Book of Summer
“Carrie R. Moore’s stories are gorgeous, resonant, and startling. It’s rare for a new writer to have such profound emotional wisdom; in Make Your Way Home, a single small ripple in a character’s interior life can build strength to become a huge wave that crashes over them. What a thrilling new talent, and what a beautiful collection of short stories.”—Lauren Groff, author of The Vaster Wilds
“Each story in Carrie R. Moore’s Make Your Way Home is remarkable, gorgeously written, complicated, deep, continually surprising—and each a page turner, too, propulsive and heartbreaking in all directions. Her characters are so real you come to know them, body and soul. Make Your Way Home is a collection that is much more than the considerable sum of its beautiful parts. It is a book that has the force of life itself, all its hurts and love and betrayal, the little intimacies, terrible mistakes, reconciliations, moments of transcendence, the ways we can and cannot change. It is an astonishing debut.”—Elizabeth McCracken, author of The Hero of This Book
“Carrie R. Moore’s arresting Southern stories pulse with the kind of intimacy, beauty, and intensity that the best art conjures. Her characters and their voices linger and arouse, long after their final moments on the page. Make Your Way Home is a deeply satisfying, glorious debut.” —Deesha Philyaw, author of The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
“With pitch-perfect attention to place, belonging, and the reverberations of history through several generations of Black men, women, and families in the American South, Make Your Way Home is a collection that moved me to my core. Carrie R. Moore conjures the complicated longing for home and connection with nuance, compassion, and grace. In the story ‘The Happy Land,’ our protagonist maintains, ‘It was nearly impossible to have everything you wanted in one place, at one time, prolonged.’ This book is a fervent exploration of this impossibility, giving space to the desire for true belonging and abundance from which this search takes root. A powerful meditation on ancestral inheritance and contemporary love, Make Your Way Home is an extraordinary and luminous debut by a singular talent.” —Megan Kamalei Kakimoto, author of Every Drop is a Man’s Nightmare
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