Ruta Sepetys is best known for her best-selling book Between Shades of Gray, a novel about a fifteen-year old girl in 1941 fighting to survive. Now, Sepetys has another World War II book out in the literary world: Salt to the Sea. In Salt to the Sea, three teenagers are forced together by circumstance while trying to flee from East Prussia: Joana, a pretty Lithuanian nurse; Florian, the Prussian knight who is harboring a priceless piece of art; and Emilia, a Polish girl in a pink hat with a sad secret. The fourth narrator in the story is Alfred Frick, a young Nazi who you can’t help but immediately hate. The four characters have different backstories and backgrounds, but have one thing in common: they all find refuge on the ship, the Wilhelm Gustloff, until it is hit with a Russian torpedo.
Salt to the Sea is filled with many memorable characters. The relationship between the Shoe Poet, an old shoemaker who finds stories in people’s shoes, and the Wandering Boy, a little boy of five or six whose grandmother “fell asleep and didn’t wake up,” brings tears to the eye. Throughout the book, as their relationship progresses, the little boy calls the Shoe Poet “Opi,” which is German for grandpa. Another wonderful character is Ingrid, a blind girl who has to hide her disability due to Hitler’s rules.
One thing that sets this book apart is the fact that it is based off of the largest maritime tragedy in history. The ship’s capacity was 1,436 people. An estimated 10,500 people were aboard the Wilhelm Gustloff, which included refugees, injured soldiers, and the sailors. The ship was hit by a torpedo and sunk within the hour. About 9,400 people died, with 5,000 of that number being children. The tragedy was covered up in the casualties of World War II.
Sepetys truly captures the horror and the will to survive in her book. She illustrates the night of January 30, 1945 in chilling clarity. A woman throws her baby down to a sailor only to miss and have the baby plunge to its death. People trampled to death by the storming mass trying to get off of the ship. Her characters are fictional, but their stories feel real. This is a must-read book. Read it and remember the tragedy that was worse than the Titanic and the Lusitania combined. Read it and remember the 9,400 people who no one knows died.