If You Turn to Look Back combines memoir with political, social, and economic investigations of what it means to be an American and a citizen of the world. American influence is ubiquitous in South America, and If You Turn to Look Back explores these relationships in a personal context. For Tom Hazuka was once part of that influence, from 1978-1980 as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Chile, first in the capital of Santiago, then in the far northern city of Arica, near the Peruvian border.

In a chain of events springing from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in 2003 Hazuka returned to Chile to examine changes in the country, the people and himself. He left Chile at twenty-four and returned at forty-seven. This fact is a constant presence in the book, which makes the author's personal concerns and observations universal. Every human knows what it's like to wonder where time goes, and to reflect on what has been gained and lost over the years.

One variable that has not changed for Hazuka is that he is an American. In South America, like it or not he is a representative in developing nations of the richest and most powerful country on the planet. The intricacies of that relationship and the dynamics it creates are the focus of If You Turn to Look Back. Hazuka began this exploration with his novel In the City of the Disappeared. In If You Turn to Look Back, he confronts those issues directly through nonfiction, using his own voice, thoughts, and unmediated experiences.