***2025 SOUTHWEST BOOK OF THE YEAR for MEMOIR***

***WINNER OF THE 2025 TILLIE OLSEN AWARD for CREATIVE NONFICTION***

***KIRKUS BEST NONFICTION of 2024***

***2024 MEMOIR PRIZE for BOOKS***

***INTERNATIONAL LATINO BOOK AWARD GOLD MEDAL for NONFICTION***

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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 descendent 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.

Reviews

Stephanie Elizondo Griest

author of All The Agents & Saints

“Tim Z. Hernandez is one of the most soulful witnesses of our time. He doesn’t just voyage to the end of the earth for his stories, he steps beyond, invoking the spirits as he follows the blood. They Call You Back is the genesis of his artistry!” 

Reyna Grande

author of A Ballad of Love & Glory

“Hernandez takes us on a poignant, eye-opening journey of self-discovery and historical insights… a beautifully written story full of layers and complexities.” 

Héctor Tobar

author of Our Migrant Souls

“With his deeply personal They Call You Back, Tim Z. Hernandez completes an ambitious and essential trilogy that has helped redefine the history of California’s Central Valley, and of the Mexican and Mexican-American farm workers who labor there. Haunting and beautiful, these works will stay with you long after you have read the last page.”

Alfredo Corchado

author of Midnight In Mexico and Homelands

“Hernandez’s They Call You Back transforms life into history, unfolding dark family secrets that linger in the collective memory of generations. Hernandez pens a memoir that is as generous and humble as the people he brings back to life with his extraordinary words. Vivid prose, powerful read!”

Octavio Solis author of Retablos

“Tim Z. Hernandez is on a quest. Through the lucid clarity of his transcendent prose, he is searching for the resolution of a tragedy and its players. But by transforming a forgotten news story into a vital living document, he transforms us into the “story keepers” of our own myths.”

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz author of Not A Nation of Immigrants, and an Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States

“In this brilliant Joycean work of memoir–the site being the agricultural Central Valley of California where white power dominates the majority of brown people–poet Tim Z Hernandez tells stories within stories reflecting the trauma experienced in this setting that fuels both his passion and vulnerabilities.”