What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance

Carolyn Forché is twenty-seven when the mysterious stranger appears on her doorstep. The relative of a friend, he is a charming polymath with a mind as seemingly disordered as it is brilliant. She's heard rumors about who he might be: a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a revolutionary, but no one seemed to know for certain. He has driven from El Salvador to invite Forché to visit and learn about his country. Captivated for reasons she doesn't fully understand, she accepts and becomes enmeshed in something beyond her comprehension. This is the powerful story of a poet's experience in a country on the verge of war and a journey toward social conscience in a perilous time.