BOOK # 6 complete

Done and Done! Book 6, entitled, Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys is complete. This book has not been released in stores yet, but it will soon. March of this year, and I totally recommend this book. Takes place in 1940 with Stalin rule. He is doing the same thing to the Lithuanians, Estonians and Latvians that Hitler did the Jews. Getting rid of them. This book is similiar to Diary of Anne Frank. We follow a family, the Vilkas, as they are bombarded and deported with no explanation. Kostas, the father is a professor, Elena, a beautiful and proud mother, Lina, a sixteen year old girl aspiring to be an artist, and Jonas, the small boy, who is eleven at the end of the book.
They are thrown into a train car with fifty other people, forced to urinate in a corner, no room for fresh air, bullied by the NKVD, now known as the KGB, for 6 weeks. After that "lovely" train ride they are deposited to a klkhoz (collective farm) somewhere in Asia. They dug holes, collected wood, stole food from the guards to survive. A young child only hours old when they were deported never made it to the farm... he was thrown out the "hole" of the train car, after taking his final breath.
Months passed... lice crawled on their skin and in their hair. They were taken by boat to Siberia in the dead of winter to survive. Not many did. That is what I will say for the story. Don't want to give too much of it away.
I enjoyed this book. Although sad, and graphic, hard to read at times, this book told a story that not many people lived to tell. At the end of the book, the author explains to us that during the time of Stalin, over 20 million people in these three countries were killed. Almost complete genocide, which thanks to Mrs. Hardman, my history teacher, I will never forget what that word means. Between Hitler and Stalin, (Satan) over 50 million souls were lost. Some Russians still to this day deny that any of this happened, and yes, perhaps they were shadowed by what really did happen, but we are urged to research to find out more, and I will do just that. I am thankful for this author. This is her first novel, and she says the characters are fiction, the events and dealings she describes were true; spoken from survivors who are now brave enough to talk. Thank you Aundrea for lending me this book. Rating: come March: GOTTA READ IT!
Happy Reading, and be proud of where we live. Free from the devilish evil of communism.