Between Shades of Gray

Between Shades of Gray


Philomel Books
March 22, 2011
Hardcover
344
English
February 3, 2023 February 9, 2023

Lina is just like any other fifteen-year-old Lithuanian girl in 1941. She paints, she draws, she gets crushes on boys. Until one night when Soviet officers barge into her home, tearing her family from the comfortable life they've known. Separated from her father, forced onto a crowded and dirty train car, Lina, her mother, and her young brother slowly make their way north, crossing the Arctic Circle, to a work camp in the coldest reaches of Siberia. Here they are forced, under Stalin's orders, to dig for beets and fight for their lives under the cruelest of conditions.

Lina finds solace in her art, meticulously—and at great risk—documenting events by drawing, hoping these messages will make their way to her father's prison camp to let him know they are still alive. It is a long and harrowing journey, spanning years and covering 6,500 miles, but it is through incredible strength, love, and hope that Lina ultimately survives. Between Shades of Gray is a novel that will steal your breath and capture your heart.


About the book

We are in Lithuania at the beginning of the Second World War, Lina with her family is deported to Siberia in a labour camp, but she doesn’t know why. Her family, like other families of university professors, writers and doctors, is on the black list that the Soviet police uses to deport people. She only wants to draw and perhaps this ability is her only salvation.

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Book Blogger Hop #11


Click the image above to know what this is about! It’s fun!

This week question:

Do you post every day on your blog and/or social media? (submitted by Elizabeth @ Silver’s Reviews)

My answer:

Not really. Weekly on my blog, and daily (more or less) on my private social media. Not so fond of Blog social media, though I know I should push this blog on SM but I’m lazy…

The Last Train to London : A Novel

The Last Train to London : A Novel
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HarperCollins Publishers
September 10, 2019
eBook
480
English
January 28, 2023 February 2, 2023
,

In 1936, the Nazi are little more than loud, brutish bores to fifteen-year old Stephan Neuman, the son of a wealthy and influential Jewish family and budding playwright whose playground extends from Vienna’s streets to its intricate underground tunnels. Stephan’s best friend and companion is the brilliant Žofie-Helene, a Christian girl whose mother edits a progressive, anti-Nazi newspaper. But the two adolescents’ carefree innocence is shattered when the Nazis’ take control.

There is hope in the darkness, though. Truus Wijsmuller, a member of the Dutch resistance, risks her life smuggling Jewish children out of Nazi Germany to the nations that will take them. It is a mission that becomes even more dangerous after the Anschluss—Hitler’s annexation of Austria—as, across Europe, countries close their borders to the growing number of refugees desperate to escape.

Tante Truus, as she is known, is determined to save as many children as she can. After Britain passes a measure to take in at-risk child refugees from the German Reich, she dares to approach Adolf Eichmann, the man who would later help devise the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question,” in a race against time to bring children like Stephan, his young brother Walter, and Žofie-Helene on a perilous journey to an uncertain future abroad.


About the book

The book is about a true story even if a little fictionalised, in the sense that the author, as she says in the final part, added her own, especially where it is not known exactly how the story went.

What I think

The book is very beautiful, the hope that you read is very heartfelt and knowing this part of the history made me happy. I knew the rough outlines of the help England gave to Jewish children, but I didn’t know the story that deep.

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