51�Թ�

But it’s Alvin, engineer and historical enthusiast, who distinguishes that “every war story was a systems story, usually one of a breakdown. Intentions were always good; decisions made at scale.”

“I can tell you my whole war story in one word: Fear,” he said.

But if any book was going to be adapted, it was going to be this one, because the way that people understand it is that it’s a Vietnam War story.

Phillips, a West Virginia native who often sets her books in her home state, sees “Night Watch” as the third of a trilogy of novels about war, following the Vietnam-era narrative “Machine Dreams” and the Korean War story “Lark & Termite,” which draws in part on a Pulitzer Prize-winning Associated Press investigation into the No Gun Ri massacre.

“Everyone has their war story,” said 29-year-old Kharkiv entrepreneur Dmytro Kabenets, who runs a chain of coffeehouses called Makers, a name he says is meant to evoke not only the creation of caffeinated beverages, but also of community.