Salt to the Sea

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What had human beings become? Did war make us evil or just activate an evil already lurking within us?” Salt To The Sea by Ruta Sepetys Throughout this WW2 novel, we realize how much bigger the world is and our small part in it. War takes away personality–with the goal to dehumanize–just like salt blends and dissolves into the sea.

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The Kleist’s daughter. When Russian soldiers come to the Kleist’s farm, they ask for Else. However, Erna Kleist offers them Emilia instead. Dr. Richter Joana is a survivor. She survived while other members of her family and other passengers on the Wilhelm Gustloff died. All she wants to do is help those around her. Yet as the Gustloff sinks she helpless in the face of such a terrible tragedy. All she can do is watch thousands of people die around her. A friend of Emilia’s father, Martin Kleist owns a farm near Nemmersdorf, in East Prussia. The Kleist family takes Emilia in during the war and Martin promises Emilia’s father that they’ll take care of her. Erna Kleist I moved from body to body, treating blisters, wounds, frostbite. But I had no treatment for what plagued people most the most. Fear." Joana, p. 40Sepetys, Ruta (March 22, 2011). Between Shades of Gray (First; Hardcovered.). Philomel Books. ISBN 9780399254123. From the author of Between Shades of Grey comes another gripping, heart-breaking novel, inspired by the worst disaster in maritime history. Told from four intertwining perspectives, this is a book that is sure to delight all historical fiction fans and people who enjoyed Sepetys’s first novel. The Nazis couldn’t stop the wind and the snow. The Russians couldn’t take the sun or the stars.” Emilia, p. 90

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She should know Poland. Looking at the child, I suddenly became hungry for my country, for its fat bees carrying nectar from apple flowers and for the birds singing in clusters of hazel.

You wrote that Emilia was your savior and that she is ever on your mind. Please do know, Florian, that she is ever in my heart as well. War is catastrophe. It breaks families in irretrievable pieces. But those who are gone are not necessarily lost. Near our cottage, where the small creek winds under the old wooden bridge, is the most beautiful bed of roses.