"I think sometimes that society has become hardened to the atrocity that was Nazi/Jew WWII, but the reality is that there were other victims of WWII as well. This is their story." — Miss Remmers
Release Date: March 22nd, 2011
Publisher: Philomel Books
Challenges: 100+ Challenge, Audiobook Challenge, DAC 2011
"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."
Forgive me, but I can't exactly remember who raved about this book on Twitter about a month ago, but THANK YOU! I remember this person just exclaiming how amazing this audio was and as a result I interlibrary loaned it without even looking up the synopsis. When I played the first tape I was surprised to see that it was a WWII novel and even more baffled that it wasn't portraying the Nazi/Jew version. No, this book illustrates life from the perspective of a young Lithuanian girl who has been imprisoned by the Soviets with her mother and young brother.
I was at first a bit weary of this plot, as (again) I'm not a big historical fiction person. But I was on a road trip to visit my mother and "had no other choice." A few tracks later I was completely enveloped and by the second disk I knew without a doubt that this audiobook would be one of my favorites. I cried several times throughout my road trip and when I wasn't in my car I was thinking of Lina and her family.
Parts of this book made my insides hurt with hunger, exhaustion, and complete despair (it was that good). It seems like the past couple of audios have really brought me down with annoyances and frustrations (mostly to do with the narrator) but this book (and narrator) did such a fantastic job of bringing me into the story and making it intensely real and horrifying.
The end, I will say, brought me to tears in the classroom. I finished another novel on reading day and still had a period to go so I went to the library and got the book (and felt like I was cheating on the audio). As the last page ended the bell rang, and I didn't even say goodbye or "have a good weekend" to my kids. As the next class trickled in I was still wrapped in the feeling of immense sorrow and elation (at the same time). There were even a few questions (spoilers): how did they get out? what happened next? What about the young Pole who help them? How did Andruis find her? Was her father really alive? But I see now that those things aren't really that important to the story.
This audiobook was phenomenal, almost life changing. If you've been struggling to find a good story or a good audiobook, no matter what your preference of genre is, this book is spectacularly honest and unique. I've never read such characters with such a real plot. I think sometimes that society has become hardened to the atrocity that was Nazi/Jew WWII (until you visit the Holocaust Museum in DC) because of all the movies and the matter-of-factness of history books, but the reality is that there were other victims of WWII as well. This is their story.
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To the FTC, with love: Library Loan