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

An electrifying memoir set in the Salvadoran Civil War:the true story of a young poet who becomes an activist through a trial by fire. Carolyn Forche, an American poet, is 27 when a mysterious stranger called Leonel appears on her doorstep, having driven direct from El Salvador. Her friend has heard rumours about who he might be - a communist, a CIA operative, a sharpshooter, a motorcycle racer, a revolutionary, a small coffee farmer - but nobody seems to know for certain. Captivated for reasons she doesn't fully understand, she accepts his invitation to visit and learn about his country, and so becomes enmeshed in the early stages of a brutal civil conflict which will ultimately see the Salvadoran state turn paramilitary death squads against its own people, and leave nearly 90,000 dead or disappeared.