It Calls You Back ─ An Odyssey Through Love, Addiction, Revolutions, and Healing

Hundreds of thousands of readers came to know Luis J. Rodriguez through his fearless classic, Always Running, which chronicled his early life as a young Chicano gang member surviving the dangerous streets of East Los Angeles. The long-awaited follow-up, and the winner of a National Book Critics Circle Award, It Calls You Back is the equally harrowing story of Rodriguez’s attempt to start over, at age eighteen, after his final stint in jail and nearly a decade of gang life. He describes with heartbreaking honesty his challenges as a father, and his difficulty leaving his rages and addictions completely behind. Even as he breaks with “la vida loca” and begins to discover success as a writer and an activist, Rodriguez finds that his past—the crimes, the drugs, the things he’d seen and done—has a way of calling him back.

When his oldest son is sent to prison for attempted murder, Rodriguez is forced to confront his shortcomings as a father and to acknowledge how and why his own history is repeating itself, right before his eyes.