The Eyes That Have Cried is a true, first-person account of survival in a land torn by war. Teresa Cortez is a young girl living in El Salvador in the 1980s. The Salvadoran Civil War produces no winners and is a tragedy in which neither side can claim moral high ground. The government uses death squads; the rebels use terrorism. As with most of the population, Teresa is caught in the middle, watching as the country devolves into chaos. As the violence ramps up, a "bourgeois" life of privilege puts Teresa in mortal danger and when her father is tortured and killed by the rebels, the decision is made to smuggle Teresa out of the country to the United States. She goes alone, at seventeen, though she knows nobody and speaks no English. There, she faces other struggles. And with her native homeland never out of mind, life for Teresa begins losing its meaning.