Between Shades of Gray Book Review

It was so exciting - as I was reading the publication from my college - I saw that a lady I went to college with had written a book - titled Between Shades of Gray. I decided to read it and it was very good. Ruta is the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee and it gave her inspiration to research what happened to Lithuania in 1941 when Stalin took over the countries of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. 

This book was very well written. I also think it is a story that needs to be told - we need to know what happened to countries swallowed up by communism. Communism is a bad system to live under and the horrors the people faced is just hard to imagine. Many in our country feel we should actively embrace socialism and that is just a step away from communism. It is important to read stories like this and see what really happened to others while living under communism. I think it might be quite a wake up call to those that think socialism and communism are okay. Ruta says her goal was to "give a voice to the hundreds of thousands of people who lost their lives during Stalin's cleansing of the Baltic region." (Ruta's blog) I think she does a great job of that and I highly recommend reading this story.

She uses great literary imagery. One is when the people were being transported by train and it took weeks. There was very little food, cramped conditions, unsanitary. Illness and disease started to spread and along with that - death. "Death had begun to gather a crop." (p. 64) I thought this was an interesting choice of words creating a great image. They were hungry / starving, yet the word crops gives one the image of being fed. Here there wasn't any feeding - the crop wasn't a benefit. Death had come! I love her choice of words.