Thanks to Penguin Random House for the free copy of this book.

CARRY is a memoir in essays by Toni Jensen, a Métis woman from the Midwest who later traveled all over the country as a journalist and professor. The book tracks scenes from her life alongside this country's epidemic of gun violence, and how the personal and the national stories collide. 

CARRY is one of the timeliest books I've ever read, and one of the starkest. The prose in this book is blunt, to the point. No time to waste when we've already lost so much. Jensen draws lines between colonization, masculinity, abusers, gun access and more, showing readers the complicated reasons for the unending violence we see every day. 

Jensen makes clear that this is a specifically Métis story but also the story of anyone who lives in the United States. Her background plays into her own experiences, but these experiences are not limited to her community, only magnified there due to the parallel violence of colonization and its many long-lasting effects. 

At times the writing feels disjointed as Jensen jumps back and forth in time and between various locations. However, I think it ultimately ended up adding to the sense that domestic abuse and gun violence are pervasive problems, outgrowths of so many factors and impossible to separate from the fabric of American life. 

Content warnings: physical and emotional abuse, gun violence, police brutality, human trafficking, sexual harassment and assault, rape, child abuse, animal abuse, murder, suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse, racism, bigotry, and more.