Between Shades of Gray

by Ruta Sepetys

In the midst of war, the will to survive is strong in humans - even in Siberia in the winter!

A knock on the door late one night in June 1941 forever changed the lives of 15-year-old Lina and her family. As her family and neighbors were rounded up and driven to the trains, they were separated with Lina, her mother and young brother going one direction and her father going another. Leaving the comforts of home for the first time, a new life begins in the cattle cars where they spend the next several weeks traveling from Lithuania eastward through Russia. Death becomes a constant companion as they fight for fresh air and food and dignity. Sent to the potato and turnip farms, they are rationed 300 grams of bread a day (about a half pound). Stealing potatoes and turnips or even finding a frozen owl to cook means the difference between life and death.

While Lina loses herself in her drawings when she's not being forced to work, Lina's mother and and her friend Andrius' mother are forced to negotiate with the guards they hate. They never lose hope that contact with their husbands is possible.

Eventually in late August, their group is sent to Siberia where they are forced to build housing for the guards with bricks that were in the bottom of the ship when they crossed the sea. Finishing the building, they are forced to carry the supplies the guards will eat during the coming winter. After they gather daily firewood for the guards, they then are tasked with building their own huts using only driftwood and scraps, and mud and seaweed to seal their buildings. They are not allowed to use wood from the forest nor to fish. Their only sustenance is their daily bread ration. Medical help is a vet who has no medicine.

I am amazed at the cruelty that humans can inflict on each other. The story of the Baltic people's genocide has been pretty much unknown, only coming to light through buried jars of papers containing drawings and their stories. Those who survived spent 10 to 15 years in Siberia and when they were released in the mid-1950s, they found that their homes, furnishings and identities had been taken over by the Soviets. They were forced to live in restricted areas as criminals - though their only crime was education and art. They were teachers, lawyers, doctors, writers, librarians, artists and musicians, who had been forced to live in the most depraved conditions imaginable. Even speaking of the things they endured meant immediate imprisonment or deportation back to Siberia. The Russians deny they ever deported anyone. Under the rule of Josef Stalin, more than 20 million people were killed.

This book, though fictional, is a combination of stories found in buried jars of those people and their fight for survival.