Between Shades of Gray

Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

Review by Joanna L

One of the most horrifying and hateful times in human history is the Holocaust. Yet also occurring in the 1940’s is a hidden past not well known to people today: the Soviet Union’s torture over the peoples of the Baltic countries. Few people know about the conquest of Josef Stalin and the Soviet Union during their expansion into neighboring nations. The stories of the agony people suffered in this time have remained silent since the time it happened. Between Shades of Gray is this story, the words which break through the silence of history. Ruta Sepetys reveals a heart-wrenching story of a young girl’s journey through loss, torment, and anguish by the hands of the Soviet Union.

Lina is fifteen years old when the Soviet army forces her family from their home in Lithuania. In the darkness of the cold night, Lina leaves behind her joyous life for a future filled with terror and uncertainty. Lina, along with her younger brother and mother, are forced from cattle cars to labor camps, enduring countless acts of torture threatening their lives each day. Throughout the story, Lina desperately searches for her father, who was sent to a prison camp after helping another family escape the Soviet army. Between Shades of Gray speaks of Lina’s fight for her life and also for her family’s through the only power she still possesses: love.

Few stories truly bring me to tears. Yet numerous passages in Between Shades of Gray filled my eyes with water at the mere thought of what a girl, only one year older than myself, had lived through. Ruta Sepetys crafts a terrifying novel of suppression, that is equally heart-shattering as it is extraordinarily beautiful and uplifting.

Between Shades of Gray is a true masterpiece. It speaks truth: even truth the world does not want to know. I had never known about the historical aspect of the novel upon reading it, but more importantly, never before had I known about true cruelty, evil, and the power in human strength.

Between Shades of Gray is not a story one can forget. This book should be read by people of all ages, of all countries, as a remembrance of the time, but also of how courage, power, and love can outshine even the darkest of horror.