i thought i would play with that title, and i talked to my editor, sarah mcgrath, and we played around it and changed hills to mountains, for obvious reasons, but also because the mountains are so recurring in this novel. but mostly for the word "echo," because a i mentioned earlier, there's an event that happens early in the book and echoes out and has a deep impact on the lives of a great number of characters, each of whom are then given a chance to voice their perspective. and so the novel is composed like a series of, like a mosaic, like a series of vignettes that all are interlocked and create collectively one big picture. >> there is a scene, the massacre, the family massacre involving rushi, is that the correct -- >> roshi, yes. >> and the complexity of the moral choices made by those who come to afghanistan making promises and then the doctor returns to california. can you -- >> well, there's a chapter in this book where there's a, an afghan ex-pat. he's a physician living in, well, in northern california -- [laughter] who's been away for 20 some odd years. who returns to afgha