"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."
RATING 4 STARS
I have wanted to read this book for a while now, and only recently had the chance to finally get the guts up to do it.
It is not a good story. It is not an enjoyable read. For the majority of this book I was either tearful or nauseous. But it is beautifully written in a way that gives hope for survival and love above all other human emotions. That being said, I think this is something that everyone should read at least once in their lifetime, but I don't think I'll be re-reading it.
This is a story that needs to be shared with the world. And I hope that, eventually, it will be.
I would have loved nothing more than to have read this book in high school. I wouldn't mind it being a required reading for everyone. Of course, I learned about Stalin and Hitler and WW2, but mostly just the "Hitler vs. the rest of the world" that predominately is told. I wish we gone into more detail about Stalin and his evils, which is exactly what this story brings to light.
I think what made this story so riveting and unforgettable is knowing that most of it happened. Even where the characters were fictional, the things that happened to them and a lot of the kindness that is shown between them is not fictional.