Salt to the Sea

joana

Guilt is a hunter. 
My conscience mocked me, picking fights like a petulant child.
It s all your fault, the voice whispered.
I quickened my pace and caught up with our small group. The Germans would march us off the field road if they found us. Roads were reserved for the military. Evacuation orders hadn t been issued and anyone fleeing East Prussia was branded a deserter. But what did that matter? I became a deserter four years ago, when I fled from Lithuania.
Lithuania.
I had left in 1941. What was happening at home? Were the dreadful things whispered in the streets true?
We approached a mound on the side of the road. The small boy in front of me whimpered and pointed. He had joined us two days prior, just wandered out of the forest alone and quietly began following us.
Hello, little one. How old are you? I had asked.
Six, he replied.
Who are you traveling with?
He paused and dropped his head. My Omi.
I turned toward the woods to see if his grandmother had emerged. Where is your Omi now? I asked.
The wandering boy looked up at me, his pale eyes wide. She didn t wake up.
So the little boy traveled with us, often drifting just slightly ahead or behind. And now he stood, pointing to a flap of dark wool beneath a meringue of snow.
I waved the group onward and when everyone advanced I ran to the snow-covered heap. The wind lifted a layer of icy flakes revealing the dead blue face of a woman, probably in her twenties. Her mouth and eyes were hinged open, fixed in fear. I dug through her iced pockets, but they had already been picked. In the lining of her jacket I found her identification papers. I stuffed them in my coat to pass on to the Red Cross and dragged her body off the road and into the field. She was dead, frozen solid, but the thought of tanks rolling over her was more than I could bear.
I ran back to the road and our group. The wandering boy stood in the center of the path, snow falling all around him.

Ruta Sepetys (www.rutasepetys.com) is an internationally acclaimed, #1 New York Times bestselling author of historical fiction published in over sixty countries and forty languages. Sepetys is considered a "crossover" novelist, as her books are read by both teens and adults worldwide. Her novels Between Shades of Gray, Out of the Easy, and Salt to the Sea have won or been shortlisted for more than forty book prizes, and are included on more than sixty state award lists. Between Shades of Gray was adapted into the film Ashes in the Snow, and her other novels are currently in development for TV and film. Winner of the Carnegie Medal, Ruta is passionate about the power of history and literature to foster global awareness and connectivity. She has presented to NATO, to the European Parliament, in the United States Capitol, and at embassies worldwide. Ruta was born and raised in Michigan and now lives with her family in Nashville, Tennessee. Follow her on Twitter @RutaSepetys and Instagram @RutaSepetysAuthor.

Praise for Salt to the Sea:

A #1 New York Times Bestseller
An International Bestseller
Winner of the Carnegie Medal
Featured on NPR's Morning Edition  


"Ruta Sepetys acts as champion of the interstitial people so often ignored whole populations lost in the cracks of history." The New York Times
 
"Superlative...masterfully crafted...[a] powerful work of historical fiction." The Wall Street Journal
[Sepetys is] a master of YA fiction she once again anchors a panoramic view of epic tragedy in perspectives that feel deeply textured and immediate." Entertainment Weekly

"[A] riveting novel . . . Sepetys skillfully weaves history into her story, here grounding her nuanced characters in the events of winter 1945. Vivid details punctuate the spare prose." The Washington Post


"[H]aunting, heartbreaking, hopeful and altogether gorgeous...one of the best young-adult novels to appear in a very long time." Salt Lake Tribune  

"Ruta Sepetys is a master of historical fiction. In Salt to the Sea the hard truths of her herculean research are tempered with effortless, intimate storytelling, as her warm and human characters breathe new life into one of the world's most terrible and neglected tragedies." Elizabeth Wein, New York Times bestselling author of Printz Award Honor Book Code Name Verity

A rich, page-turning story that brings to vivid life a terrifying and little-known moment in World War II history.   Steve Sheinkin, author of Newbery Honor and National Book Award finalist Bomb
 
"Brutal. Beautiful. Honest."  Sabaa Tahir, New York Times bestselling author of An Ember in the Ashes

"Ruta Sepetys is more than just an author she's history's answer to CSI." Mashable

"[A] stunning historical novel."