Truth Demands
A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice
by Abby Reyes
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Pub Date 6 May 2025 | Archive Date 30 Apr 2025
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Description
In 1999, Abby Reyes lost her partner, Terence Unity Freitas, as he and two others were murdered after departing Kajka Ika—the heart of the world—of Indigenous U’wa territory in Colombia.
Imperiled by multinational oil interests, U’wa lifeways were under attack. Terence, Ingrid Washinawatok El-Issa (Menominee), and Lahe’ena’e Gay (Hawaiian) arrived to listen to community needs and accompany the U’wa. But then they disappeared. Days later, their bodies were found, bound and bullet-riddled in a cow field across the border in Venezuela.
Twenty years later, Abby finds herself in Case 001 of Colombia’s truth and recognition process. They want to know her stories. They want to know her questions. They want to know her truth demands: the fragments she’s held for decades about the last days of Terence’s life. Why was he taken? Who pulled the trigger? Who was really behind the killings?
Plunged back into grief, ambiguity, and the unknown, Abby is called to navigate the past. Old wounds are reopened, old histories are redrawn, and fresh angers flare as she confronts the testimony of one of her lover’s killers—and the burden that Terence unwittingly compelled her to bear.
Spanning three decades and three continents, Truth Demands charts Abby’s parallel journeys as she navigates the waters of loss, purpose, and impermanence while fighting for truth and accountability from big oil. A profound and haunting memoir, Truth Demands is an invitation into the current. It shows us how to hold fast even as we let go—holding us as we bear witness and welcome with courage and skill what the truth demands of us all.
A Note From the Publisher
For more information or for a physical copy, please email publicity@northatlanticbooks.com.
Advance Praise
“Today’s catastrophe of climate change is preceded by more than a century of atrocities based on the dig, burn, and dump global economy of fossil fuels, mostly on Indigenous lands like that of the U’wa. Truth Demands is a single searing thread connecting one story of murder and grief to the story of climate change, and all we need to organize, imagine, and fight for collectively to overcome it; it is a story as big as our world can contain. . . . Truth Demands allows the U’wa to tell their own story, while connecting us directly, simply, to it. This book does not make sense of the brutal murders of Terence Freitas, Lahe'ena'e Gay, and Ingrid Washinawatok—that is not possible. But it does help make meaning of their lives and blazes a path forward for all of us who remain.”
—MIYA YOSHITANI, co-director of Movement Innovation Collaborative, former executive director of Asian Pacific Environmental Network, and steering committee member of the Climate Justice Alliance
“Heartbreaking and inspirational. . . . This book is not for the faint of heart, but it is a necessary read for embracing the reality of risk that human rights defenders face every day as they valiantly seek to protect Mother Earth. I applaud Reyes for this raw rendering, artfully crafted in a way that kept me spellbound from beginning to end. I have emerged from the reading as a better, more informed, and grounded person and advocate.”
—JACQUI PATTERSON, executive director of the Chisholm Legacy Project Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership and a 2024 Time Woman of the Year
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Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781623175214 |
| PRICE | US$19.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 256 |
