On the morning of March 29, 2023—one year ago this Friday—Simon Brooks woke up to 18 missed calls and a slew of text messages. “The texts were like, ‘Is this real?’ ” Brooks told me, “and I immediately knew, and I was like, ‘Dude, Evan.’ ”
He meant his best friend, Evan Gershkovich, who had roomed with Brooks at Bowdoin College in Maine, moved to Russia,…
