A novel by Ruta Sepetys
In 1939, the Soviet Union overran the Baltic States. Anyone suspected of being anti-Soviet — especially teachers, doctors, lawyers and former military members – were rounded up and placed in prisons. Their families were herded and packed into train cars like animals and sent to Siberian work camps.
Sepetys’ real-life grandfather and many of his family members were treated in such a way. Her research into their outcomes fueled this novel, and many hours of interviews with Lithuanian survivors and other experts provided the details. The stories they recanted, which are channeled through the voice of a teenage protagonist named Lina, tell of hunger, disease, neglect and many other gross atrocities. The conditions they were subjected to prompted them to root for the Nazis to prevail against the Russians and made them contemplate the nobility and selfishness of succumbing to death or struggling to live.
— Book review by Darryl Woods, Main Library, Charleston, S.C.
Find this and similar titles at Charleston County Public Library. To learn more or to place a hold, visit www.ccpl.org or call 843-805-6930.
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