India, Nov. 1 -- Wars leave behind more than ruined cities and redrawn borders. They enter homes, reshape relationships and settle into silences that outlive those who first endured them. For Estonian writer Lilli Luuk, these quieter consequences of history offer an essential point of entry into the past: the lives of women who sustained families and communities while the world around them fractured.

"I strive to give a voice to those women who kept life going during the war and the subsequent Soviet occupation in Estonia," she says. It is a statement that illuminates both her literary concerns and her understanding of remembrance. What happens beyond the battlefield? How does survival alter the texture of ordinary life? And who records ...