Through penetrating analysis of twentieth-century historical fiction from Central America this book asks: why do so many literary texts in the region address historical issues? What kinds of stories are told about the past when authors choose the fictional realm to represent history? Why access memory through fiction and poetry? Nicole Caso traces the active interplay between language, space, and memory in the continuous process of defining local identities through literature. Ultimately, this book looks to the dynamic between form and content to identify potential maps that are suggested in each of these texts in order to imagine possibilities of action in the future.