Between Shades of Gray meets Titanic in this epic WWII-era novel that shines a light on one of the war's most devastating - yet unknown - maritime tragedies.
Praise for Salt to the Sea :
"Ruta Sepetys is a master of historical fiction. In Salt to the Sea the hard truths of her herculean research are tempered with effortless, intimate storytelling, as her warm and human characters breathe new life into one of the world's most terrible and neglected tragedies." - Elizabeth Wein, New York Times bestselling author of Printz Award Honor Book Code Name Verity
"A rich, page-turning story that brings to vivid life a terrifying-and little-known-moment in World War II history." - Steve Sheinkin , author of Newbery Honor and National Book Award finalist Bomb
"Brutal. Beautiful. Honest." - Sabaa Tahir, New York Times bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes
"Sepetys excels in shining light on lost chapters of history, and this visceral novel proves a memorable testament to strength and resilience in the face of war and cruelty." - Publishers Weekly, starred review
"This haunting gem of a novel begs to be remembered, and in turn, it tries to remember the thousands of real people its fictional characters represent. What it asks of us is that their memories, and their stories, not be abandoned to the sea." - Booklist, starred review
"Artfully told and sensitively crafted, Sepetys's exploration of this little-known piece of history will leave readers weeping." - School Library Journal, starred review
"The inevitability of the ending (including the loss of several characters) doesn't change its poignancy, and the short chapters and slowly revealed back stories for each character guarantee the pages keep turning. Heartbreaking, historical, and a little bit hopeful." - Kirkus
"This book includes all the reasons why teens read: for knowledge, for romance, for amazing and irritating characters. This novel will break readers' hearts and then put them back together a little more whole." - VOYA
"Sepetys's...scene-setting is impeccable; the penetrating cold of the journey is palpable, and she excels at conveying the scope of the losses while giving them a human face....[T]his elegiac tale succeeds with impressive research, affecting characters, and keen, often unsettling insights into humans' counterposed tendencies toward evil and nobility. Readers will be left to discuss which impulse triumphs here." - The Horn Book
Ruta Sepetys was born and raised in Michigan in a family of artists, readers, and music lovers. She is the award-winning, bestselling author of Between Shades of Gray and Out of the Easy . Ruta lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee.
joana
Guilt is a hunter.
My conscience mocked me, picking fights like a petulant child.
It's all your fault, the voice whispered.
I quickened my pace and caught up with our small group. The Germans would march us off the field road if they found us. Roads were reserved for the military. Evacuation orders hadn't been issued and anyone fleeing East Prussia was branded a deserter. But what did that matter? I became a deserter four years ago, when I fled from Lithuania.
Lithuania.
I had left in 1941. What was happening at home? Were the dreadful things whispered in the streets true?
We approached a mound on the side of the road. The small boy in front of me whimpered and pointed. He had joined us two days prior, just wandered out of the forest alone and quietly began following us.
"Hello, little one. How old are you?" I had asked.
"Six," he replied.
"Who are you traveling with?"
He paused and dropped his head. "My Omi."
I turned toward the woods to see if his grandmother had emerged. "Where is your Omi now?" I asked.
The wandering boy looked up at me, his pale eyes wide. "She didn't wake up."
So the little boy traveled with us, often drifting just slightly ahead or behind. And now he stood, pointing to a flap of dark wool beneath a meringue of snow.
I waved the group onward and when everyone advanced I ran to the snow-covered heap. The wind lifted a layer of icy flakes revealing the dead blue face of a woman, probably in her twenties. Her mouth and eyes were hinged open, fixed in fear. I dug through her iced pockets, but they had already been picked. In the lining of her jacket I found her identification papers. I stuffed them in my coat to pass on to the Red Cross and dragged her body off the road and into the field. She was dead, frozen solid, but the thought of tanks rolling over her was more than I could bear.
I ran back to the road and our group. The wandering boy stood in the center of the path, snow falling all around him.
"She didn't wake up either?" he asked quietly.
I shook my head and took his mittened hand in mine.
And then we both heard it in the distance.
Bang.
florian
Fate is a hunter.
Engines buzzed in a swarm above. Der Schwarze Tod , "the Black Death," they called them. I hid beneath the trees. The planes weren't visible, but I felt them. Close. Trapped by darkness both ahead and behind, I weighed my options. An explosion detonated and death crept closer, curling around me in fingers of smoke.
I ran.
My legs churned, sluggish, disconnected from my racing mind. I willed them to move, but my conscience noosed around my ankles and pulled down hard.
"You are a talented young man, Florian." That's what Mother had said.
"You are Prussian. Make your own decisions, son," said my father.
Would he have approved of my decisions, of the secrets I now carried across my back? Amidst this war between Hitler and Stalin, would Mother still consider me talented, or criminal?
The Soviets would kill me. But how would they torture me first? The Nazis would kill me, but only if they uncovered the plan. How long would it remain a secret? The questions propelled me forward, whipping through the cold forest, dodging branches. I clutched my side with one hand, my pistol with the other. The pain surged with each breath and step, releasing warm blood out of the angry wound.
The sound of the engines faded. I had been on the run for days and my mind felt as weak as my legs. The hunter preyed on the fatigued and weary. I had to rest. The pain slowed me to a jog and finally a walk. Through the dense trees in the forest I spied branches hiding an old potato cellar. I jumped in.
Bang.
emilia
Shame is a hunter.
I would rest a moment. I had a moment, didn't I? I slid across the cold, hard earth toward the back of the cave. The ground
