where women carry houses stitched to their backs, while men carry keys with the power to unlock them. Miriam's nomadic family moves from clearing to clearing within a dark wood, but no matter how deep into the forest they travel, the haunted calls of Wild Things follow. As precious family heirlooms disappear and Father roams through the woods later and later into the night, Mother slowly loses her memory and Miriam begins to understand that her family might not be as human as it appears. The Family That Carried Their House on Their Backs is a modern fairytale that interrogates the trauma embodied by mothers, inherited by daughters, and patterned in our walls, chests, and feet.