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Everything That Makes You

book by Moriah McStay

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionMay 18, 2026
Entity authorityQ60743069 ↗
Source-derived summary

Everything That Makes You is an American young adult novel by Moriah McStay. The novel was published in 2015 by Katherine Tegan Books.

Set in Memphis, the novel is a split narrative that combines the story of teenager Fiona Doyle with one narrative focusing on Fiona, a teenager who was burned as a child by the hot oil from a popcorn machine and sustained severe facial scars, and the other focusing on "Fi", the version of Fiona who was unscarred by the accident.

McStay, who is blind in one eye, decided to write the book based on her own experiences wondering what her life would have been like if she had full sight.

Plot

Fiona Doyle is a teenager who is extremely self-conscious about her severe facial scarring, caused by oil burns from a popcorn machine. She has a crush on Trent, one of her classmates, but realizes that he will never be attracted to her because of her scars. To her surprise her friend David asks her out and Fiona begins dating him though she is not particularly attracted to him. Instead she is focused on song-writing, guitar playing, and trying to get into Northwestern University for creative writing. Before she leaves for university her doctors suggest a skin graft from a cadaver that might help her cosmetically. After her mother and brother pressure her, Fiona decides to go for the surgery.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Everything That Makes You” is book by Moriah McStay. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Everything, Makes and book, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA useful identification and reception guide that helps separate the work itself from editions, performances, ownership and later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—2015—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Everything, Makes and book is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “book by Moriah McStay” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q60743069. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 2015.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Everything That Makes You”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Everything That Makes You primary sources, Everything That Makes You archive and Everything research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Everything That Makes You”?
  2. How did later circulation or interpretation alter the work’s reception?
  3. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Everything That Makes You” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.