"True" Stories

I've been reading a lot of Card lately, and particularly the "Ender" series. Within these stories, and also in the "Afterwords"(at least in my copies), Card talks a lot about his goals for each book and also his theories on literature and story-telling and truth. The two main books involved are Shadow of the Hegemon and Children of the Mind. So I was wondering if anyone has read these two books and the essays(?) that accompany them; and if so, what do you think of Card's statements? Are they true? How do they relate to your own reasons and goals for writing? Finally--and this will make more sense if you have read the books and essays mentioned--how invested do you think an author has to be in the "truth" of their own stories for readers to accept, at least for the time they are reding them, the truth of these stories?

Pthom said:

I read Children of the Mind because it's a part of the Ender "quartet". I am aware that not everyone enjoyed that book, but I did, quite a lot. Can't say I read any essay--perhaps it wasn't included in my edition? Or maybe I did and that's why I haven't read any further in the Ender saga. There comes a time when a person can read no more of a particular author without a break. ... I'm still on break.

As far as truth, I don't know that, either. From what I've read of Card, I believe his style to be internally truthful in story and world-building. Whether such truths extend into our real world, I'm not sure. Certainly, the character Han Qing-jao (Xenocide) was most believable in Xenocide, and important enough to be "quoted" at the beginning of each chapter in "Children".

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My copy of children has an "afterword"... it isn't quite an essay, sorry.