The University of Arizona Press
Date: Thursday, April 16, 2026
Time: 7 p.m., PST
Where: McClarty Center for Fine & Performing Arts, 995 N Reed Ave, Reedley College, Reedley, CA
Tim Z. Hernandez, author of They Call You Back: A Lost History, A Search, A Memoir, will speak at Reedley College on April 16. The event is free and open to the public. They Call You Back is the featured book for the 2025-2026 1Book/1College program. In 2016, the Reedley College Literary Arts adopted the 1Book/1College program, hoping to create a college- and community-wide conversation around a single work in the belief that a shared experience leads to deeper and more meaningful engagement and connection.
Hernandez is an award-winning author, research scholar, and performer. His books include fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, and he is the recipient of numerous awards, including the American Book Award.
About the book:
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.
