WestWords Books

Book title: The Drone by Pete Shmigel

Reviewer: Lee McKerracher

It is a sad fact of life that countries are invaded, people are attacked, and violence becomes normalised. Every day, we see media reports about war, predominantly the war in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. These reports tend to focus on an umbrella view of the war; the number of missiles launched; the number of drone attacks; the number of military and civilian deaths and wounded; the number of buildings destroyed; and how much territory has been won or lost during the battles. War is reduced to statistics. This is why Pete Shmigel’s book, The Drone, is so important, as it takes the war in Ukraine down to a granular level.

The Drone is a collection of 17 short stories that vividly show how acts of violence from a hated invader impact every aspect of life. But this is not the first time Ukraine has resisted the Russian advance. Its people are used to living with the threat across the border.

In The Next Card, Lyuda, who works in the local hospital cafeteria, notices how her dog, Rocky, now responds to the threat of drone attack. ‘After each of his ‘inspections’ Rocky would pull up and slightly raise his head to the clouds above. The hair on his spine prickled up. He thinks it's his job now, Lyuda thought to herself.’ Something as simple as taking your dog for a walk, is now overshadowed by threats from above.

Just going to school can be risky. In Katya’s Kvity, Kateryna thinks back to dressing her daughter for school, but now the school is no longer there. Destroyed by missile fire, it is now a pile of rubble. But as Kateryna thinks, ‘Luckily it happened on a Sunday. Only the caretaker and his family had been killed. Luckily. Only.’ This horror does not stop Kateryna from trying to live her life. She insists on wearing her bright red lipstick, she re-opens her flower shop and stocks it with bright yellow sunflowers. These are acts that represent her resilience and her bravery.

Throughout the stories, we see the disparity between the fighting forces. The Ukrainian military has become adept at workarounds as there simply is not enough materiel, weapons, or even food to keep them going, but they do keep going. AWOL illustrates this clearly. ‘Welding took skill. Sergey remembered welding chain-link fence to the outside of his tank as anti-drone protection. The soldiers called it a ‘field solution’. The name they gave every modification they made that wasn’t in the manuals, but would hopefully save their lives.’

It is these personal experiences that hit the reader with the cruel reality of war. War is so much more than statistics and camera-panning shots over clouds of dust from missile strikes. War is about the woman who keeps walking her dog, the children who still play in the fields, the shopkeepers who try to keep their local communities functioning. It is the teachers, nurses, farmers, accountants, florists, hotel operators, and every single citizen who works every day, looking forward to a time when life may just again be blessedly ordinary.

Pete Shmigel shows us how everyday people are impacted by war, how they yearn for their lives to be ordinary again, but until that is possible, they must resist and adapt their existence to cope with the daily onslaught.

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Review’s bio:

Lee McKerracher is an emerging writer from Western Sydney who has a passion for historical fiction. Her short stories have been published in the following anthologies: Hiding in Plain Sight and Only I Can Say by WestWords; Small Things and From Eternity to Here by Stringybark Publishing. Her piece, Across Generations, was published in the January 2025 edition of the Society of Australian Genealogists Journal, Descent Magazine. Her first historical fiction novel, Parallel Lives, was shortlisted for the 2025 Gloria Burley Award for Best Unpublished Manuscript. Lee is currently working on her second novel, You’re Not Welcome Here. Both of these feature women who fight to have their voices heard, overcoming personal and societal challenges. Lee is a member of the 2025 WestWords Academy.