The Whole Ride Back is a collection of poems that traces the effect of transient familial relationships on the speaker’s isolation and detachment. These poems utilize the natural landscape of the Southeastern United States, among other places, and employ a constant navigation between moderation and associative release of information, demonstrated through varying line length and stanza structure throughout. The speaker draws on family myth-making, dreams, and an ever-unattainable other to discuss the ways in which memory and habit affect the self’s capacity for attachment.