The Echelon

Set in autumn, during wartime.

<blockquote>I dedicate this story to my mother, because the subject here is the war—not battles and fighters, not the warrior heroes who are supposed to be brave and steadfast, but those who survived and stood their ground when it seemed impossible to either survive or stand. Our mothers were ordinary women— the simplest, the weakest women— the ones it is customary to call “ordinary, weak women.” And even if every day, like a prayer, we will repeat words of gratitude for the fact that we are alive, for the fact that we are—just as we are—that we sit together today in the warmth and comfort of the theater, then our debt to them will not diminish or thin…</blockquote>