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Summary
Summary
The inspiration for the major motion picture Ashes in the Snow !
"Few books are beautifully written, fewer still are important; this novel is both." -- The Washington Post
From New York Times and international bestseller and Carnegie Medal winner Ruta Sepetys, author of Salt to the Sea , comes a story of loss and of fear -- and ultimately, of survival.
A New York Times notable book
An international bestseller
A Carnegie Medal nominee
A William C. Morris Award finalist
A Golden Kite Award winner
Fifteen-year-old Lina is a Lithuanian girl living an ordinary life -- until Soviet officers invade her home and tear her family apart. Separated from her father and forced onto a crowded train, Lina, her mother, and her young brother make their way to a Siberian work camp, where they are forced to fight for their lives. Lina finds solace in her art, documenting these events by drawing. Risking everything, she imbeds clues in her drawings of their location and secretly passes them along, hoping her drawings will make their way to her father's prison camp. But will strength, love, and hope be enough for Lina and her family to survive?
A moving and haunting novel perfect for readers of The Book Thief .
Praise for Between Shades of Gray :
"Superlative. A hefty emotional punch." -- The New York Times Book Review
"Heart-wrenching . . . an eye-opening reimagination of a very real tragedy written with grace and heart." -- The Los Angeles Times
"At once a suspenseful, drama-packed survival story, a romance, and an intricately researched work of historial fiction." -- The Wall Street Journal
* "Beautifully written and deeply felt . . . An important book that deserves the widest possible readership." -- Booklist , starred review
"A superlative first novel. A hefty emotional punch."-- The New York Times Book Review
"A brilliant story of love and survival."--Laurie Halse Anderson, bestselling author of Speak and Wintergirls
* "Beautifully written and deeply felt...an important book that deserves the widest possible readership."-- Booklist , Starred Review
Author Notes
Ruta Sepetys is the award-winning, bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray, Out of the Easy and Salt to the Sea, for which she won the 2017 Carnegie Medal. From the Hardcover edition.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Through the pained yet resilient narration of 15-year-old Lina, a gifted artist, this taut first novel tells the story of Lithuanians deported and sent to Siberian work camps by Stalin during WWII. From the start, Sepetys makes extensive use of foreshadowing to foster a palpable sense of danger, as soldiers wrench Lina's family from their home. The narrative skillfully conveys the deprivation and brutality of conditions, especially the cramped train ride, unrelenting hunger, fears about family members' safety, impossible choices, punishing weather, and constant threats facing Lina, her mother, and her younger brother. Flashbacks, triggered like blasts of memory by words and events, reveal Lina's life before and lay groundwork for the coming removal. Lina's romance with fellow captive Andrius builds slowly and believably, balancing some of the horror. A harrowing page-turner, made all the more so for its basis in historical fact, the novel illuminates the persecution suffered by Stalin's victims (20 million were killed), while presenting memorable characters who retain their will to survive even after more than a decade in exile. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Horn Book Review
In 1939, the Soviet Union annexed the Baltic nations, which then disappeared from maps, not to reappear until 1990. Teachers, librarians, musicians, artists, writers, business owners, doctors, lawyers, and servicemen were considered anti-Soviet and sent into exile. Esther Hautzig told this story in her seminal 1968 memoir The Endless Steppe; Sepetys's even starker novel is more extreme in its depiction of deprivation and suffering. When in June 1941 the Soviet secret police show up at fifteen-year-old Lina Vilkas's Lithuania home and throw Lina, her younger brother, and their mother onto a train, a decade-long nightmare begins. "Like matchsticks in a small box," forty-six people were crammed into their car, "a cage on wheels, maybe a rolling coffin" bound for the vast nothingness of Siberia. So begins a human drama calling forth the best and worst of human behaviors -- courage, anger, fear, confusion, little kindnesses, and egregious selfishness. The bald man with the broken leg whines and complains, while the librarian organizes the children and tells stories, and all along the way Lina's mother keeps her family together. Sepetys creates complicated characters: there's more to the bald man than whining and complaining, and the young NKVD guard Nikolai proves not to be the monster Lina considers him. Two excellent maps and an informative author's note round out a haunting chronicle, demonstrating that even in the heart of darkness "love is the most powerful army." dean Schneider (c) Copyright 2011. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Sepetys' first novel offers a harrowing and horrifying account of the forcible relocation of countless Lithuanians in the wake of the Russian invasion of their country in 1939. In the case of 16-year-old Lina, her mother, and her younger brother, this means deportation to a forced-labor camp in Siberia, where conditions are all too painfully similar to those of Nazi concentration camps. Lina's great hope is that somehow her father, who has already been arrested by the Soviet secret police, might find and rescue them. A gifted artist, she begins secretly creating pictures that can she hopes be surreptitiously sent to him in his own prison camp. Whether or not this will be possible, it is her art that will be her salvation, helping her to retain her identity, her dignity, and her increasingly tenuous hold on hope for the future. Many others are not so fortunate. Sepetys, the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee, estimates that the Baltic States lost more than one-third of their populations during the Russian genocide. Though many continue to deny this happened, Sepetys' beautifully written and deeply felt novel proves the reality is otherwise. Hers is an important book that deserves the widest possible readership.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
"THEY took me in my nightgown." The opening sentence of this superlative first novel by Ruta Sepetys demonstrates the strength of its unembellished language. Thus, 15-year-old Lina Vilkas, along with her mother and younger brother, is deported from her Lithuanian home by the Soviet secret police in 1941, and begins a cattle-car journey through a series of forced-labor camps that will span 12 years and 6,500 miles. In the 1930s and '40s, Josef Stalin's regime killed tens of millions of people, a number so large that the mind tends to shunt it off into the abstract space reserved for statistics. "Between Shades of Gray" tells the individual's story that makes such cold facts meaningful. Apart from a few overly dramatic metaphors, Lina recounts her story with a straightforward clarity that trusts readers to summon images of starvation, disease and death, and grounds them in a reality young adults can understand. After 15 months of forced labor in Siberia, Lina's journey ends at the very edge of the world: Trofimovsk, on the Laptev Sea well beyond the Arctic Circle, where the brutal climate worsens already unbearable conditions. (A timeline and two frontispiece maps showing the route will be especially helpful to readers unfamiliar with Stalinist Russia.) Lina's family and other prisoners are forced to build barracks for the armed Soviet guards and to construct their own shelters from scrap and driftwood: "It looked like something a child would make in the dirt. And we had to live in it." Flashbacks in italics provide glimpses of Lina's life before the genocide in an educated middle-class milieu (her father was a university professor). We learn about family and friends through Lina's eyes, and even minor characters are convincingly portrayed through their dialogue and actions. Readers also discover the extent of the tragedy. They witness the Soviet invasion of the Baltic States, with the subsequent murder of millions and the displacement of millions more. And they learn that many survivors were forced into the impossible position of supporting Hitler, compelled by their fear and hatred of Stalin. Yet Sepetys adroitly holds the exposition of complex political events to a minimum, and short chapters allow for the psychological deep breaths necessary when reading about relentless atrocity. As expected in Y.A. fiction, Lina has both a love interest and a special skill. Her relationship with another refugee is one of attraction amid desperation, their physical desire tamped down only by the limits of their emaciated, louse-ridden bodies. Lina's talent for drawing likewise plays a role: in her attempts to get a coded message to her father; in the assignments she is given by her Soviet captors for map-copying and portraiture; in the flashbacks to her life as a promising art student. While Sepetys takes care not to overwhelm readers with endless accounts of murder, the miasma of death hangs over Lina's journey, and a wrenching loss near the end delivers a hefty emotional punch. An epilogue answers certain questions a bit too neatly, but the story that precedes it holds a messier and more powerful reality, for both Lina and for her country. Linda Sue Park's most recent book is the novel "A Long Walk to Water."
School Library Journal Review
Gr 8 Up-This novel is based on extensive research and inspired by the author's family background. Told by 15-year-old Lina, a Lithuanian teen with penetrating insight and vast artistic ability, it is a gruesome tale of the deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia starting in 1939. During her 12 years there, Lina, a strong, determined character, chronicles her experiences through writings and drawings. She willingly takes chances to communicate with her imprisoned father and to improve her family's existence in inhuman conditions. Desperation, fear, and the survival instinct motivate many of the characters to make difficult compromises. Andrius, who becomes Lina's love interest, watches as his mother prostitutes herself with the officers in order to gain food for her son and others. To ward off starvation, many sign untrue confessions of guilt as traitors, thereby accepting 25-year sentences. Those who refuse, like Lina, her younger brother, and their mother, live on meager bread rations given only for the physical work they are able to perform. This is a grim tale of suffering and death, but one that needs telling. Mention is made of some Lithuanians' collaboration with the Nazis, but for the most part the deportees were simply caught in a political web. Unrelenting sadness permeates this novel, but there are uplifting moments when the resilience of the human spirit and the capacity for compassion take over. This is a gripping story that gives young people a window into a shameful, but likely unfamiliar history.-Renee Steinberg, formerly at Fieldstone Middle School, Montvale, NJ (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Guardian Review
"We had become bottom-feeders, living off filth and rot." The transformation from daughter of a Lithuanian university provost into a starving scavenger, accustomed to witnessing acts of unimaginable cruelty, worked half to death and stripped of all dignity, takes a matter of weeks. Ruta Sepetys gives readers no more time to prepare themselves for the horrors of the work camp than the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) give 15-year-old Lina and her family time to pack their suitcases. "They took me in my nightgown" is the first line of this remarkable debut. Based on first-hand accounts, Sepetys's YA novel charts an immense journey, in every sense, from a middle-class home in Lithuania to a gulag at Trofimovsk in the Arctic Circle. The bare facts about the genocide perpetrated by Stalin are nigh on impossible to take in. On the other hand, have a lucid 15-year old describe a Siberian winter, or how the NKVD waited outside a hospital for the next victim's umbilical cord to be cut, then we can glimpse something of what occurred. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia disappeared off the map in 1940 and did not reappear until the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. When the survivors of the work camps were finally allowed home (most perished), the permanent, threatening presence of the KGB ensured that their stories could not be told. Lina documents her experiences in words and drawings and buries them in a jar hoping that her testimony will eventually see the light of day. The storyteller who wishes to bring such a past to life, "make it real" by fictionalising it, clearly shoulders an immense responsibility. Sepetys draws heavily on the heartbreaking testimony of survivors. She must have faced some tough narrative choices. Is it your duty, for example, when writing for a teenage audience, to sift through the cinders of such a hell to find meaning and consolation in some form? For Sepetys love certainly redeems: love of country, love of family, love of fellow survivor. And it is in the small gestures that it finds its expression: beet smuggled in underwear under the gaze of the guards, sharing rations with strangers, asking the name of one's tormentor. Readers will inevitably compare Lina's (albeit fictional) first-person narration with that of Anne Frank: the clear-sighted intelligence and courage, the focus on the minutiae of life, the fears and the foibles of one's fellow human beings. A major difference is that we read Frank's words knowing that she is doomed. Lina, however, tells us at the outset that "It was the last time I would look into a real mirror for more than a decade." So the tension works differently here: what new horrors will Lina have to bear? The fluid narrative is compelling yet restrained. The horrors of the cattle trucks and the gulag, the cruelty of the Soviet guards, are all there. Minor characters are memorably and vividly drawn, and the first half of the book, in particular, roars along. Dr Johnson wrote that the only end of writing is to enable readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it. Hard to read but even harder to stop reading, there is no doubt into which category this tremendous first novel belongs. Linda Buckley-Archer's Time Quake trilogy is published by Simon & Schuster. To order Between Shades of Gray for pounds 5.59 with free UK p&p call Guardian book service on 0330 333 6846 or go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop - Linda Buckley-Archer "We had become bottom-feeders, living off filth and rot." The transformation from daughter of a Lithuanian university provost into a starving scavenger, accustomed to witnessing acts of unimaginable cruelty, worked half to death and stripped of all dignity, takes a matter of weeks. Ruta Sepetys gives readers no more time to prepare themselves for the horrors of the work camp than the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) give 15-year-old Lina and her family time to pack their suitcases. "They took me in my nightgown" is the first line of this remarkable debut. Readers will inevitably compare Lina's (albeit fictional) first-person narration with that of Anne Frank: the clear-sighted intelligence and courage, the focus on the minutiae of life, the fears and the foibles of one's fellow human beings. A major difference is that we read Frank's words knowing that she is doomed. Lina, however, tells us at the outset that "It was the last time I would look into a real mirror for more than a decade." So the tension works differently here: what new horrors will Lina have to bear? - Linda Buckley-Archer.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Chapter 1: They took me in my nightgown. Thinking back, the signs were there--family photos burned in the fireplace, Mother sewing her best silver and jewelry into the lining of her coat late at night, and Papa not returning from work. My younger brother, Jonas, was asking questions. I asked questions, too, but perhaps I refused to acknowledge the signs. Only later did I realize that Mother and Father intended we escape. We did not escape. We were taken. June 14, 1941. I had changed into my nightgown and settled in at my desk to write my cousin Joana a letter. I opened a new ivory writing tablet and a case of pens and pencils, a gift from my aunt for my fifteenth birthday. The evening breeze floated through the open window over my desk, waltzing the curtain from side to side. I could smell the lily of the valley that Mother and I had planted two years ago. Dear Joana. It wasn't a knocking. It was an urgent booming that made me jump in my chair. Fists pounded on our front door. No one stirred inside the house. I left my desk and peered out into the hallway. My mother stood flat against the wall facing our framed map of Lithuania, her eyes closed and her face pulled with an anxiety I had never seen. She was praying. "Mother," said Jonas, only one of his eyes visible through the crack in his door, "are you going to open it? It sounds as if they might break it down." Mother's head turned to see both Jonas and me peering out of our rooms. She attempted a forced smile. "Yes, darling. I will open the door. I won't let anyone break down our door." The heels of her shoes echoed down the wooden floor of the hallway and her long, thin skirt swayed about her ankles. Mother was elegant and beautiful, stunning in fact, with an unusually wide smile that lit up everything around her. I was fortunate to have Mother's honey-colored hair and her bright blue eyes. Jonas had her smile. Loud voices thundered from the foyer. "NKVD!" whispered Jonas, growing pale. "Tadas said they took his neighbors away in a truck. They're arresting people." "No. Not here," I replied. The Soviet secret police had no business at our house. I walked down the hallway to listen and peeked around the corner. Jonas was right. Three NKVD officers had Mother encircled. They wore blue hats with a red border and a gold star above the brim. A tall officer had our passports in his hand. "We need more time. We'll be ready in the morning," Mother said. "Twenty minutes--or you won't live to see morning," said the officer. "Please, lower your voice. I have children," whispered Mother. "Twenty minutes," the officer barked. He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot. We were about to become cigarettes. Excerpted from Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
