The setting for this story is Nazi-occupied Greece in 1941-42, but it could belong equally to El Salvador or Chile or any other oppressive military dictatorship, for it is about the horror of being 'disappeared' When the men are taken from a patriarchal society, the women must find strength in each other Their courage, and their insistence on knowing who is alive and who is dead, is a compelling indictment of the cruelty and indifference of such regimes