They Call You Back: A Lost History, a Search, a Memoir (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780816557042)

Winner of the Tillie Olsen Prize for Memoir
Memoir Magazine Prize
International Latino Book Award for Nonfiction
Southwest Books of the Year Recognition

A haunting, an obsession, a calling: Tim Z. Hernandez has been searching for people his whole life. Now, in this highly anticipated memoir, he takes us along on an investigative odyssey through personal and collective history to uncover the surprising conjunctions that bind our stories together.

Hernandez's mission to find the families of the twenty-eight Mexicans who were killed in the 1948 plane wreck at Los Gatos Canyon formed the basis for his acclaimed documentary novel All They Will Call You, which the San Francisco Chronicle dubbed "a stunning piece of investigative journalism," and the New York Times hailed as "painstaking detective work by a writer who is the descendant of farmworkers."

In this riveting new work, Hernandez continues his search for the plane crash victims while also turning the lens on himself and his ancestral past, revealing the tumultuous and deeply intimate experiences that have fueled his investigations--a lifelong journey haunted by memory, addiction, generational trauma, and the spirit world.

They Call You Back is the true chronicle of one man's obsession to restore dignity to an undignified chapter in America's past, while at the same time making a case for why we must heal our personal wounds if we are ever to heal our political ones.


Author: Tim Z. Hernandez
ISBN-10: 0816557047
ISBN-13: 9780816557042
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Language: English
Published: 09/08/2026
Pages: 272
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.00lbs