Kalyn Fogarty

What We Carry Kalyn Fogarty

Cassidy Morgan's life has always followed a carefully laid track: top education, fulfilling career, and marriage to the love of her life. The next logical step was starting a family. But when a late-term miscarriage threatens to derail everything she's worked so hard for, she finds herself questioning her identity, particularly what it means to be a mother. Unable to move past her guilt and shame, she realizes there's more to fix than a broken heart. Grief illuminates the weaknesses in her marriage and forces her to deal with her tumultuous relationship with her own mother. Cassidy hopes her work as a veterinarian specializing in equine reproduction will distract her from the pain, but she instead finds that one of the cases she's working on shines a spotlight on the memory of her unborn son. For once in her life, she's left untethered and wondering why she wanted to become a mother in the first place. Then the unexpected happens: Cassidy becomes pregnant again. But joy over her baby is tempered by her fear of another loss as well as her increasingly troubled marriage. Now, she must decide whether to let her pain hold her back or trust that there's still something to live for. What We Carry is a thought-provoking response to the author's own miscarriage and lack of fiction surrounding the topic, which she and many other women in her situation crave.