by Ruta Sepetys
I so much want to go back and read the reviews of this before I write anything down, but I won't. My mission is not to echo other people's opinions or even refute them--my mission is absolute honesty.
Absolutely honestly, I don't see what the big deal was about. I loved the book. I'm sure it was dead-on accurate--it's the kind of historical fiction I'd love to write. Historical fiction can tell history in a way that non-fiction stuggles to achieve--living, breathing, hurting and surviving history. This being a tale of good people caught in an awful time, the simple facts wouldn't have made the picture real in a way that this excellent story did.
So what I'm wondering about is, why did I get the notion this was something literary? People raved and ah'ed over this book like it was a contender for The Morning News Tournament of Books.
Whatever my mistake, I was still pleased with the book although the content was a complete bummer. As the cover says, the nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia disappeared from maps in 1941 and did not reappear until 1990. In this book, the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee gives a voice to the hundreds of thousands who lost their lives during Stalin's cleansing of the Baltic region. I hope high schools read books like this, and then discuss places in the world where right now this stuff is happening--Sudan, Syria, Congo, Ethiopia, Burma. Probably others, see http://www.genocidewatch.org/alerts/newsalerts.html
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