about the book
Joana is a pretty Lithuanian nurse who believes she is a murderer. Alfred is a sociopathic Nazi soldier and sailor. Florian is a fifteen-year old-boy harboring a secret package and a secret identity. Emilia is a Polish girl without papers who is hiding a mysterious pregnancy.
The year is 1945, and all four of them are aboard a ship called the Wilhelm Gustloff. Originally built to be a cruise boat made to carry 1,500 passengers, it is instead packed to the gills, carrying 10,000 passengers as people are desperate to escape Prussia before the Russians invade. The brutally cold winter is upon them, and World War II is raging. Florian, Joana, and Emilia find themselves uniting in an effort to keep their courage and strength up, as each of them are alone on board.
Just as the Wilhelm Gustloff is about to reach safety and freedom, disaster literally strikes in the form of a Russian torpedo. Now all 10,000 passengers on board with have to fight for their lives if they have any hope for survival.
about the author
Ruta Sepetys (pronounced Roota Suh-pettys) was raised in Michigan, the youngest of three kids in a home of artists, music lovers, and readers. She headed off to college to become an opera singer, but ended up studying international finance at Hillsdale College as well as at the Centre d’etudes Europeannes and the Institute Commercial de Nancy in France.
After graduation, Ruta moved to Los Angeles where she launched Sepetys Entertainment Group, a business that managed big-name musicians. After thirteen years of coping with fires, earthquakes, and horrible traffic, she moved to Nashville, Tennessee. There she met a “beautiful” man whom she married and who later convinced her to write a novel—after all she loves to sit, can be very melodramatic, and is passionate about paper!
Ruta has three novels out today. Between Shades of Gray was her first book, which was inspired by her grandfather who, as a young boy, escaped Stalin’s Baltic genocide. Out of the Easy is about a girl who wants a new life outside of New Orleans, but becomes tangled up in a dark murder mystery. Salt of the Sea is based upon a historical tragedy—the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during World War II, an event to which she also has family ties.
Recently, Ruta was awarded the Cross of the Knight of the Order by the President of Lithuania for her efforts to educate readers world-wide and preserve the memories of the Lithuanian people. She may have a name that is continually mispronounced, but she is incredibly proud of her Lithuanian heritage.
Ruta does her writing when she is stuck in traffic, on a plane, or early in the morning before work—sometimes even sitting on the edge of the bathtub. Ruta currently lives in the hills of Tennessee in a treehouse.
Sources:
Author website
Author interview: NPR
Book Trailer: Salt to the Sea
Also by Ruta Sepetys:
Out of the Easy. Philomel. 2013.
Between Shades of Gray. Philomel. 2011.
read more!
Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys
Lina, a Lithuanian girl, is wrenched from her life and taken by the Soviets to a labor camp in 1941. In Siberia, she, her mother, and her younger brother, have to fight to survive both the climate and the Soviet NKVD guards. To cope, Lina retreats to her art, hoping somehow that her story will survive in her paintings.
Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse
Hanneke lives in Amsterdam in the midst of World War II. She juggles the dangers of secretly securing and selling goods on the black market with hiding her work from her parents. She is also grieving the death of her boyfriend at the hands of the Nazis. But life becomes even more harrowing when a woman convinces Hanneke to find a missing Jew that she had been hiding in her home.
Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein
In her journal, American pilot Rose recounts how she ferried planes during WWII for the Allies and was captured by the Nazis. At the brutal Ravensbruck camp, she refuses to make bomb fuses, resulting in severe beatings, and is assigned to a high-security unit where the prisoners are abused in medical experiments by the Nazi doctors.