Anyone who reads this magnificent memoir will partake of that luminous transformation." - The New York Times Book Review What Leonel Gómez was really offering when he lured her down to El Salvador was the chance to become Carolyn Forché. It amounts to almost a shamanistic transmitting of Forché's experience into our own. "One recovered incident, person, landscape, and image at a time, the narrative advances, accruing tremendous authority and emotional power.
One of Electric Literature's 15 Best Nonfiction Books of 2019 One of New York Times' critic Jennifer Szalai's 10 Best Books of 2019 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. Pursued by death squads and sheltering in safe houses, the two forge a rich friendship, as she attempts to make sense of what she's experiencing and establish a moral foothold amidst profound suffering. As priests and farm-workers are murdered and protest marches attacked, he is determined to save his country, and Forch is swept up in his work and in the lives of his friends. These encounters are a part of his plan to educate her, but also to learn for himself just how close the country is to war. Together they meet with high-ranking military officers, impoverished farm workers, and clergy desperately trying to assist the poor and keep the peace. Captivated for reasons she doesn't fully understand, she accepts and becomes enmeshed in something beyond her comprehension. He has driven from El Salvador to invite Forch to visit and learn about his country. She's heard rumors from her friend about who he might be: a lone wolf, a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer, but according to her, no one seemed to know for certain. The relative of a friend, he is a charming polymath with a mind as seemingly disordered as it is brilliant. Written by one of the most gifted poets of her generation, this is the story of a woman's radical act of empathy, and her fateful encounter with an intriguing man who changes the course of her life.Ĭarolyn Forch is twenty-seven when the mysterious stranger appears on her doorstep. What You Have Heard is True is a devastating, lyrical, and visionary memoir about a young woman's brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others. "Astonishing, powerful, so important at this time." -Margaret Atwood Reading it will change you, perhaps forever." - San Francisco Chronicle
Description 2019 National Book Award Finalist
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