In 2023, Maria Reva and her sister were on a train hurtling through a Ukrainian night toward the battle-scarred city of Kherson. They were hoping to reach their grandfather, still there in the midst of carnage. It was crisis time for Reva in more ways than one. The novel she had started to write back in Canada was in jeopardy: what she had originally envisaged as a lighthearted romp satirizing Ukraine’s controversial “romance” tours had been upended by Russian aggression.