Fifteen-year-old Lina, her mother, and her younger brother are dragged from their home and packed into a train car in the opening pages of this harrowing novel that begins in Lithuania on June 14, 1941. After a harsh six-week journey with other political prisoners, they arrive in Siberia, where they spend the next several months working on a beet and potato farm before being moved to a prison camp in the Arctic Circle. Author Ruta Sepetys examines Joseph Stalin’s barbaric campaign against the Baltic peoples through the experiences of a teen and her family in a novel that makes history immediate, intimate, and powerful. The struggle for survival as they face starvation, abuse, and illness contrast with Lina’s memories of her life at home, where she dreamed of being an artist and was surrounded by the conversations of her parents and other intellectuals. Desperate for word of her father, who she knows was on another train of prisoners, and in a constant state of fear—for her mother, her brother, herself—Lina is sustained by anger, and by art, creating drawings on anything she can find. The riveting pace and dramatic tension of Sepetys’s narrative is matched by an indelible sense of place and wonderfully drawn secondary characters, each of who reveals another dimension of the tragedy that unfolded across those mid-twentieth-century years in moments that are sometimes cruel, sometimes courageous, and often, simply, so very human. (Age 14 and older)

The inspiration for the major motion picture Ashes in the Snow!

"Few books are beautifully written, fewer still are important; this novel is both." --The Washington Post

From New York Times and international bestseller and Carnegie Medal winner Ruta Sepetys, author of Salt to the Sea, comes a story of loss and of fear -- and ultimately, of survival.

A New York Times notable book
An international bestseller
A Carnegie Medal nominee
A William C. Morris Award finalist
A Golden Kite Award winner

Fifteen-year-old Lina is a Lithuanian girl living an ordinary life -- until Soviet officers invade her home and tear her family apart. Separated from her father and forced onto a crowded train, Lina, her mother, and her young brother make their way to a Siberian work camp, where they are forced to fight for their lives. Lina finds solace in her art, documenting these events by drawing. Risking everything, she imbeds clues in her drawings of their location and secretly passes them along, hoping her drawings will make their way to her father's prison camp. But will strength, love, and hope be enough for Lina and her family to survive?

A moving and haunting novel perfect for readers of The Book Thief.

Praise for Between Shades of Gray:

"Superlative. A hefty emotional punch." --The New York Times Book Review

"Heart-wrenching . . . an eye-opening reimagination of a very real tragedy written with grace and heart." --The Los Angeles Times

"At once a suspenseful, drama-packed survival story, a romance, and an intricately researched work of historial fiction." --The Wall Street Journal

* "Beautifully written and deeply felt . . . An important book that deserves the widest possible readership." --Booklist, starred review

“A superlative first novel. A hefty emotional punch.”--The New York Times Book Review

“A brilliant story of love and survival.”--Laurie Halse Anderson, bestselling author of Speak and Wintergirls 

* “Beautifully written and deeply felt…an important book that deserves the widest possible readership.”--Booklist, Starred Review