Between Shades of Gray by Ruta Sepetys

This novel recreates the suffering of a family deported from Lithuania to Siberia during World War II. The Vilkas family has been arrested because the father is an educator and Lithuanian nationalist. Stalin targeted members of the intelligentsia because he wanted to destroy possible sources of protest in post-war Soviet society. The novel reads much like a book on the Holocaust. Indeed, millions of Eastern Europeans were subjected to slave labor, starvation and for some, summary execution. Only recently have their stories and the breadth of Stalin's purges come to light. Whether the persecution of national and ethnic groups rose to the level of the mass extermination of Jews is a subject of debate--as is the current view that Lithuanians and others were victims of the Soviets as opposed to collaborators with the Germans. Nonetheless, the struggles of Lina, her brother Jonas, their mother and other Lithuanians is a compelling one. The reader is reminded of the human capacity for courage and endurance as well as cruelty. Recommended.