Salt to the Sea

It is a statement to how much I love this author that I would even read this book. WW2 books never have a happy ending. And this one is about the children/teens who had to face the warring factions of Russia AND Germany during WW2. Mix that with the fact that this is based on the tragic sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff and the fact that 9000 innocent people died, it's not a book I would run to. But from page one, I was transported to the group. Joana, Emilia, Florian, and the Shoe Poet as they walked and hid and foraged to get to the port to board a boat to escape the Russians against all odds. Each has a story so tragic as to break your heart. Each one has a fate to escape and run to. Each one saves the others until they reunite on the ship. The ship that was to be their salvation. Now we have all seen Titanic and the horror that was the sinking. But somehow reading about it through the eyes of teens was a thousand times worse. Sepetys is a master story teller. She weaves these characters tales seamlessly, one to the next in short chapters that make you read well past a reasonable hour. Even the fourth character, Alfred, a Nazi supporter, has a fascinating story he tells, but as a totally unreliable narrator. The beauty of this story is how we are able to see through their eyes, the horror that is war. And war is cruel. And people weren't treated as people. And heroic things were done, that no one knows about. And we continue this cycle, on different fields of battle. And no one stops to think of what is being destroyed. I sat on the beach today and finished this book. Tears were shed not only for these characters, but for the terror the real people must have felt, the desperation to save their families, the things they had to endure to survive. Fate isn't always kind. So thank you for opening my eyes to this tragedy Ruta Sepetys. I will share this with my students and hopefully, through literature, they will be a better generation than the ones before them. Happy reading my friends!