Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When Lina is 15, her family is deported by Soviet troops. Her father is arrested and sent to prison. She, with her mother and brother, Jonas, are hearded first onto trucks, then into train cattle cars. The travel east for six weeks with barely enough to eat, no higiene and no knowledge of where they are going. Bodies are dumped at each stop along the way to the Altai labor camp, in the southern Soviet Union (near Biysk). They are working on a beet farm, where they are each given 30 grams of bread per day - if they work. I someone cannot work, they get no bread. Generally speaking, the people work together to keep everyone alive - pilfering potatoes and beets, other food from the soldiers mess. After 8 months, part of the group is taken to Trofimovsk on the Artic Ocean at 72.6 degrees north. When they arrive, nothing is there except a partially build barracks for the soldiers. The starving prisoners must unload supplies from their steamship and complete the barracks, a bakery, and a fish factory. Young boys were sent to fish, but had to give the fish to the Russians. Again they were alloted 30gr of bread per day. The prisoners had to build their own hut (yurt) out of what they could find - before the first snowfall. It was already August.

The Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, and Finns who were deported by the Soviets to Siberia generally stayed 10 years - if they survived. This is a story from this terrible injustice.

The book is told in the voice of Lina. You can hear her go from a sheltered girl to determined woman in the book. Please read this book.

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