Memoir of American poet Carolyn Forché speaking to the time in her life she spent traveling El Salvador with a man who showed up on her doorstep one day when she was twenty-seven, whom she had hitherto known only as the relative of one of her friends whose occupation no one seemed to know. Forché and this man meet high-ranking military officers in El Salvador, as well as impoverished farm workers, and clergy trying to help the downtrodden in the country and keep the peace.