We were supposed to marry in the regal church in our hometown — not there, standing just beyond the tent city of the Buzuluk refugee and military camp, just far enough from the tents that the squalid stench of eighty thousand desperate souls was slightly less thick in the air.
-- Narrator - Alina (“Prologue”)

Importance: Alina indicates that she had always believed that she and Tomasz would be married in a church in their hometown. She mentions that this dream was destroyed when she learned she must be married in a refugee camp. She never mentions that she is marrying Saul, who is using Tomasz’s name.

I sometimes wonder if I would have done anything different that day, if only I’d known that within a year they’d both be dead — and that those quiet moments by the train station would be the very last time I ever saw them.
-- Narrator - Alina (Chapter 5)

Importance: Alina was impressed by...