Summary:
Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they’ve known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin’s orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.
Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father’s prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.
My take: 3 looks
This has been on my TBR for a while, and when I saw it at the Friends of the Library store, bought for a deal, I grabbed it!
This books deals with the Russian soldiers during WWII and their treatment and use of citizens from the Baltic states to do their bidding, work, labor, and anything else that needed to be done for the war effort. While the United States and Britain pushed for nationalism and encouraged citizens to volunteer or work for the needs of war, Russia enslaved fellow Russian in workcamps to accomplish the building that was necessary for garrisons to house soldiers, and the businesses that would support them while the fighting continued.
It never occurred to me that people in the Allied forces would be pressed into slave labor, since my own country didn’t do this, but it does stand to reason that, when soldier housing was needed in Siberia, it would come from people who were treated no better than the Jews at the hands of the Nazis. I was completely in the dark about the atrocities of war on OUR side of the fight.
This book brought these heinous acts to life through characters that felt real and demanded empathy. It infuriated me that this happened, and I am glad that Ruta Sepetys has pushed this knowledge to the forefront. War is ugly. On both sides. We need to better acknowledge that.
Recommended.
