You Came Back

The women of the Walker Air Force Base Library have their share of secrets. They wait. Their husbands and lovers are sent on missions that can last months at a time and take place in foreign countries around the world. And the women wait. They wait unwillingly. They wait for a return they dream of only to realize that the actual return is something they could not have foreseen. Ilsa Chisholm, director of library and information services at the base, awakens from a powerful dream, a dream so vivid that she cannot shake it while awake and working. She begins to write General Kevin Collins, the former base commander, now overseas in a war zone. Inspired by her own cathartic writings, she gives her own staff a writing assignment: each must write a story, one that my not be factual but tells of something true. Some write of facing period of loss head on, others tell stories of romance, history, elegy, fantasy–even that of a story told to children. And when Ilsa’s e-mails to the general weave throughout the stories, what is exposed is a cold, startling trurh that sometimes a return is as painful as the going away. Set in a world where human separations are expected but where no amount of repetition can ever make the absence easy, You Came Back is a powerful portrayal of love, loss and the deep effect of war upon those who wait.