Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Lina, a fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl, leads a typical life until Soviet soldiers break into her house and split up her family. Lina, her mother, and her baby brother are confined to a crowded train after being separated from their father, and they travel to a Siberian labour camp where they must battle for their life. Lina expresses these events through sketching as she finds peace in her creativity. She risks everything by hiding hints about their whereabouts in her drawings and covertly passing them on in the hopes that they would end up at her father’s jail camp. But can Lina and her family be able to endure with just strength, love, and hope? A poignant and unsettling book that is ideal for fans of The Book Thief.
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
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Written in the first person, it is the story of Lina, a 15-year-old girl who, instead of going to art school, was forced to board a train that was travelling deep into the Soviet Union. These people, like the Jews in many regions of Europe, were crammed into railroad wagons and deprived of food, fresh air, and even restroom facilities. They also lost their homes, valuables, and even their lives. It was heartbreaking to discover that, in many cases, Americans who were too ignorant, too naive, or simply didn’t care to know what was going on were feeding and supplying the oppressors themselves. Children and the elderly began to pass away as they travelled east.
Their dead were actually “swept clean” from train cars and not even given the respect of a burial. Before the voyage even starts, Lina takes a life-threatening risk by attempting to locate her father who has been loaded into a train and is being driven to a prison, where she subsequently learns he was shot. She meets another kid at this point named Arvydas, with whom she later falls in love. Her group was initially taken to one camp for forced labour before being transferred to another. Lina loses her own mother at the second camp, which is situated close to the Arctic Circle and has particularly hard weather.
In 1941, Lina, a fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl, is like any other teenager. She paints, doodles, and develops crushes on men. Up until the night when Soviet officers storm into her house and uproot her family from their cosy existence. Lina, her mother, and her baby brother slowly travel north, passing the Arctic Circle on their way to a work camp in the harshest parts of Siberia after being separated from their father and crammed aboard a cramped, filthy train car. On Stalin’s orders, they are compelled to work in the harshest conditions to dig for beets and battle for their lives.
Lina turns to her art for solace, carefully – and in great danger – recording events through drawings in the hopes that these messages would reach her father’s jail camp to inform him that they are still alive. By extraordinary bravery, love, and hope, Lina survives the protracted and terrifying voyage that lasts years and covers 6,500 miles. The book Between Shades of Gray will take your breath away and win your heart.
Through Lina’s eyes, we witness events that will permanently alter her life. One second she is safe at home with her family, and the next she is rounded up with other people and sent off on a journey. They reluctantly comply with their kidnappers’ orders despite having no idea where they are going, when or if they will ever return, and a suitcase packed with their sparse things. I had the impression that they were definitely being transferred to a concentration camp and that their deaths were imminent when they were initially led to a train station. This wasn’t the case because Stalin intended for the bulk of his inmates to work in horrific conditions as part of their prison sentences.
Their ordeal doesn’t end with the train ride because they are given scant food to eat and are forced to dwell in conditions that would be difficult for animals, let alone humans. They must learn to coexist in the cramped spaces as more passengers are jammed into the train cars as they travel, enabling them to form friendships and bonds that will be useful to them later on.
Lina and her family first travel to a work camp, where slavery is practised to the fullest extent. This book has several parts that make me think of the Holocaust, including the way the inmates are treated. Everybody works until they are completely exhausted, and the daily food rations are quite low. Everyone develops the skills necessary to get by, and many rely on the connections they made on the train to help them in their daily lives.
With Lina’s flashbacks, we discover throughout the book that their captivity is due to political reasons. Everyone who disagreed with Stalin’s goals or ideals was apprehended and either put in jail or a labour camp. Lina was young, and she could not really comprehend the reasons behind this revelation, so it was intriguing to view it through her eyes.
