Ruta Sepetys was born and raised in Michigan, the youngest of three, in a family of artists, readers and music lovers.
She is a longtime music business executive and has run her own successful management company SEG, where she represented award-winning artists and songwriters. She was featured in Rolling Stone Magazine’s “Women in Rock” issue in 2002. Sepetys is on the adjunct staff at Nashville’s Belmont University in the Entertainment Industry Studies program and is on the faculty of the Midsouth Writing Conference.
between shades of gray, inspired by her father who fled from Lithuania as a young boy, when Stalin invaded the Baltics during WWII, is her first novel. She currently lives with her family in Tennessee.
between shades of gray
a novel
by Ruta Sepetys
Every few years that rare novel comes along that has the power to not only educate and entertain, but to transform its reader. Such is Ruta Sepetys’ delicately balanced and deeply personal debut novel, between shades of gray (Philomel, released March 22, 2011). This is the shocking and untold story of Joseph Stalin’s ethnic cleansing in the Baltic countries during WWII, as seen through the eyes of a 15-year-old Lithuanian girl. While Hitler waged war on the Jews, Stalin waged war on the people of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia—deporting them to the uninhabitable northernmost reaches of Siberia, enslaving them, and murdering them. Countless innocent people died, yet this tragic period was all but lost to history for decades. This is the heartbreaking story of one brave and hopeful survivor.
between shades of gray is told from the point of view of Lina, whose comfortable life is forever destroyed when Soviet officers barge into her home on June 14, 1941, taking her, her mother and younger brother off to a Siberian work camp, never to see their father again. Forced to dig beets and fight for their lives, Lina finds solace in her art, which she covertly uses to document their hardships, and in a young man named Andrius whom she both loves and resents. When she and her family are taken from their Siberian camp and moved farther north to the frozen, eternal night of the Arctic Circle, Lina is certain they will die there. It is her incredible strength, love for her family and hope that she will one day be reunited with Andrius and her father that allow her to endure and ultimately survive to tell her story.
Since it’s release, between shades of gray has become a New York Times bestseller and has received widespread critical praise and numerous accolades including the Book-of-the-Month Club’s distinguished National Blue Ribbon Award, given to first-time authors for works that the club singles out as truly exceptional. The book is currently, or will be available soon in more than 23 countries including Australia, Brazil, China, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Slovakia and Turkey.
Ruta Sepetys is the daughter of a Lithuanian refugee. She drew upon true stories from survivors as well as meticulously researched journal entries, sketches and other accounts of the deportations and Russian prison camps. As part of her extensive research, Sepetys travelled to Lithuania to speak with survivors and historians. She even participated in an immersion experience in a former Soviet prison, enduring a surprisingly realistic reenactment of the prison’s brutal conditions.
To date, most of the accounts of “Stalin’s Terror” against the Lithuanians exist only in obscure textbooks. Because the Baltics were Soviet occupied for more than 50 years, until 1990, those who survived were not able to speak about the mass deportations or the gulags out of fear of immediate arrest and imprisonment, effectively keeping these horrendous events largely secret, until now. Sepetys’ beautifully told novel offers a moving portrait of the important and overlooked part of history and the strength of those who survived it.
Watch interviews with Ruta Sepetys and some of the Lithuanian survivors who inspired this story at:
