I read The Adoration of Jenna Fox years ago, and loved it. Mary Pearson is a genius! Her books always have such depth, which is what I love most about her work. There is so much to love in The Fox Inheritance: forgiveness, guilt, avoidance, acceptance, change, and letting go. Pearson introduced the concept of darkness in people, and how it’s not the darkness itself that makes us bad, but how we choose to deal with it. Violence vs. mercy. Calculating, one-track minds vs. compassion and willingness to listen. Absolutely stunning.

In The Adoration of Jenna Fox, we learn that a car accident occurred, setting the whole story in motion. In The Fox Inheritance, we find out more about that accident, and we’re in the head of Jenna’s friend, Locke. Locke’s and Kara’s consciousness ends up spending 260 years in some sort of computer storage before they are given bodies and educated about the new world around them.

I absolutely loved how Pearson managed to take us back to the accident, and at the same time set the story 260 years after it happened. Locke seems simultaneously stuck back in his native time period, and yet also stuck in his new one. As a result, he has a very difficult time doing more than going through the motions of living, which isn’t how he’d lived his life before the accident.

Slowly, he learns to open his eyes to the reality of his new world and begin to deal with the things churning inside of him. In the process, he learns that some people aren’t who he thought they were, both in good ways and bad. It becomes an empowering experience for him, learning his strengths and weaknesses and setting himself on a path to discovering who he is now. Much like a normal adolescence, and yet it couldn’t be more different. Brilliant!

If you get a chance, definitely pick up a copy, and then read it a few times. There is plenty of fantastic subtly and subtext to explore here.