Top Highlights

• “This story holds great historical significance as we continue to define ourselves as a nation. . . . Woody would be proud to know that his song played a part as a catalyst for this book, offering overdue closure to the lives of these workers.”
• What followed were not the details of my grandfather that a person would ever find in hospital files, on his birth certificate, or in any hall of records. No, these were the rememberings that by the old campesino’s understanding made up the very core of who he was, his DNA in testimony.
• While the telling itself is true, its loyalty is not to people of fact but rather to people of memory. Which is to say, all of us. In this way, it’s inevitable that some rememberings will contradict other rememberings. If several people witness the same tragedy and offer opposing accounts, whose version is the most accurate? In this case, perceptio...
• And though memory’s propeller turns with embellishment, guesswork, and even reimaginings, this telling is rooted in years of investigation and interviews with the surviving families and friends I was successful in locating—a search that required traveling six decades back in time, to numerous cities, ranchos, and barrios, in three countries, three ...
• They tossed Red a shovel, and he too began flinging dirt at the flames, quicker than most, since it was his family’s property that was on the verge of incineration.