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librarianryan 's review for:
Between Shades of Gray
by Ruta Sepetys
4.5 Stars
Oh my goodness. Such a great book. I can not repeat that often enough.
Lina is a 15 year old girl when this book starts. In one long year she will experience things most others do not, and gain a lifetime of nightmares, and horrific injuries. Lina is Lithuanian. One night she, along with her family, are taken from their homes and sent to Siberia. She gets to stay with her mom and brother, while her dad is sent to prison. Why? Because they are Lithuanian jews. If the story sounds a little familiar, you are right, but you are also so very wrong. Stalin is the big baddie in this story. He had control over the Baltics and sentenced people to prison or work camps in Siberia just for being born. There they worked and did little else. They were in a prison of another type. The guards would give them a chance to sign a guilty plea for a 25 year sentence of hard labor. By signing the plea you might get some small advantages. These advantages were not more food, or a warmer place to stay, but maybe you could teach the children instead of work in the beet field all day. Maybe. It was not an ideal situation.
If you or a member of your family was caught, or thought to be helping someone else, you were taken from the warm (not really) Serbian camps to the camps in the far north above the Arctic circle. You had to build your own yurt and maybe, just maybe it would be enough shelter to get you through the long dark night which was five months long.
This story is so compelling, and so gripping that once started it’s hard to stop. But you need breaks to wipe away the tears. While this is not a true story, it is based on many real life experiences. Stalin exterminated around 20 million people, and this is the story of a handful of them. What gets this reader most is how it’s a forgotten time of history. Many people didn’t talk of these events until the late 1990’s. The fear is still real, and still there for many in the baltic countries. This amazing book has made me more curious about this time in history, and I plan to delve more into it.
#beatthebacklist #Dobby
#mountTBR
Oh my goodness. Such a great book. I can not repeat that often enough.
Lina is a 15 year old girl when this book starts. In one long year she will experience things most others do not, and gain a lifetime of nightmares, and horrific injuries. Lina is Lithuanian. One night she, along with her family, are taken from their homes and sent to Siberia. She gets to stay with her mom and brother, while her dad is sent to prison. Why? Because they are Lithuanian jews. If the story sounds a little familiar, you are right, but you are also so very wrong. Stalin is the big baddie in this story. He had control over the Baltics and sentenced people to prison or work camps in Siberia just for being born. There they worked and did little else. They were in a prison of another type. The guards would give them a chance to sign a guilty plea for a 25 year sentence of hard labor. By signing the plea you might get some small advantages. These advantages were not more food, or a warmer place to stay, but maybe you could teach the children instead of work in the beet field all day. Maybe. It was not an ideal situation.
If you or a member of your family was caught, or thought to be helping someone else, you were taken from the warm (not really) Serbian camps to the camps in the far north above the Arctic circle. You had to build your own yurt and maybe, just maybe it would be enough shelter to get you through the long dark night which was five months long.
This story is so compelling, and so gripping that once started it’s hard to stop. But you need breaks to wipe away the tears. While this is not a true story, it is based on many real life experiences. Stalin exterminated around 20 million people, and this is the story of a handful of them. What gets this reader most is how it’s a forgotten time of history. Many people didn’t talk of these events until the late 1990’s. The fear is still real, and still there for many in the baltic countries. This amazing book has made me more curious about this time in history, and I plan to delve more into it.
#beatthebacklist #Dobby
#mountTBR