If You Find Me begins in a forest in Tennessee, where fifteen-year-old Carey Blackburn lives with her six-year-old sister, Jenessa. It was optioned for a major motion picture and reissued in an expanded version in 2014. It was long-listed for the 2014 Carnegie Medal and short-listed for the 2014 Waterstones Children’s Book Prize. She seeks answers for her mysterious past, struggling to keep her sister close as the secrets of their early childhood come back to haunt them.Įxploring themes of family, abuse, and the ability to survive in impossible circumstances, If You Find Me was critically acclaimed and received some of the best reviews of any young adult novel that year. Two people come to the woods to take the girls back to the world of civilization, where Carey must adjust to a new world of high school while grappling with the fact that her mother abducted them a decade ago. Their mother’s behavior becomes more and more erratic until she disappears entirely. Carey knows she must keep her sister close, and her secrets even closer, or risk watching her new life come crashing down.Emily Murdoch's debut novel, If You Find Me (2013), is a work of YA fiction that centers on Carey, a teen who lives in the woods with her younger sister, Jenessa, and their mentally ill mother. a dark past that hides many a secret, including the reason Jenessa hasn't spoken a word in over a year.

Now, Carey must face the truth of why her mother abducted her ten years ago, while haunted by a past that won't let her go. Suddenly, the girls are taken from the woods and thrust into a bright and perplexing new world of high school, clothes and boys. Until that one fateful day their mother disappears for good, and two strangers arrive. All they have is each other, as their mentally ill mother comes and goes with greater frequency. The trees keep guard over her threadbare existence the one bright spot is Carey's younger sister, Jenessa, who depends on Carey for her very survival. In If You Find Me by Emily Murdoch, a broken-down camper hidden deep in a national forest is the only home fifteen year-old Carey can remember.

There are some things you can't leave behind.