Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys

7th-12th grade selection - Historical Fiction - Young Adult

Genre

Historical Fiction

Young Adult Historical Fiction

Target Age Group

Ages 15+

8th - 12th grade

Lexile Level: 560 according to Novel List (EBSCOhost, 2015)

Summary

This novel follows four teenagers in the winter of 1945 and the fictionalized events, relationships, and hardships leading up to what is often considered one the worst maritime disasters to have occurred: the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff on January 30^th, 1945. Ruta Sepetys gives a voice and depth to the widely unknown tragedy that took place off the coast of the Eastern Front when evacuating Germans from what is formerly known as Prussia.

Justification

Salt to the Sea has been on my “to be read” list for some time, so this project was the perfect opportunity to dive into this historical fiction novel. My local public library has this novel cataloged and shelved as Young Adult Fiction and it is popular amongst patrons and staff alike and was the choice for at least one branch’s choice for Book Club (Tulsa City-County Library, n.d.). Ruta Sepetys is a valued and esteemed author of the Oklahoma Library Association as one of her more recent novels has recently been selected as a Sequoyah Book Award Nominee. Salt to the Sea has been awarded several accolades and honors including but not limited to the Carnegie Medal, School Library Journal Best Book of 2016, and Goodreads Best YA Fiction of 2016 winner (Goodreads, n.d.; Oklahoma Library Association, n.d.)

Evaluation

For Salt to the Sea, I will be evaluating the tension of the story, the accuracy of the historical information, and the importance of the point of view rendered by the novel’s characters.

While I did not enjoy the unsuccessful execution of multiple points of view, Salt to the Sea was a novel I could not put down and is a story that is thoroughly enjoyed by many. Ruta Sepetys does a phenomenal job of taking a popular historical fiction topic - World War II -   and then turning unsuspecting readers upside down with a wildly unknown subject. She gives readers an untold story, that alone is often enough to keep readers invested in the book. In the case of Salt to the Sea, my biggest draw was learning what each introductory sentence for each character meant: guilt, fate, shame, and fear – what were these compelling words going to divulge for each character, what secrets are they keeping? Salt to the Sea also has the advantage of being a historical fiction novel centered around a real and catastrophic event, the reader goes into the story wanting to know what happened. With each page, you get closer to that cataclysmic moment and learn the fates of the four principal characters. The narrative is fraught with tension, the reader has to know what comes next, they want to know who these characters are, and what their secrets mean.

Ruta Sepetys is heralded for providing a narrative to those forgotten in history. The characters Ruta Sepetys used to tell the story are not based on real people, rather they are the embodiments of those who lived and died during this time of World War II: a repatriated Lithuanian woman trying to make her way home, a Polish refugee who had been hurt in unimaginable ways by Russian soldiers, a Prussian man on the run, and a German soldier on board the Gustloff. While not based on real, singular people, Ruta Sepetys uses these four principal characters to tell the stories of the millions affected during World War II. Salt to the Sea gives a voice to refugees fleeing the advancing Russian army, and those fleeing Nazi persecution – oddly fleeing into the arms of more Nazis. While the building narrative is fictionalized, the culminating event of the novel is the very real and tragic sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, a former German luxury liner that had been requisitioned for the evacuation of Germans and refugees from the Eastern Front during World War II in what was known as Operation Hannibal. The sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff is considered to be one of the worst maritime disasters, with an estimated 9,000 deaths. Her Author’s Note provides a background of the sinking of the Gustloff, includes a narrative of the research mission she undertook to accurately prepare for writing the novel including mentioning communications with survivors, and supplied a list of resources that she found helpful in her research (Petrikowski, 2023; Selcer, 2022).

What I love about most novels I pick up, not just historical fiction, is that the author chooses to tell the story from multiple points of view (POV). When done correctly, this tactic allows the readers to experience hurt, joy, excitement, resentment, fear, etc., alongside the characters. Multiple POVs are meant to propel the story and also offer insight into conflicting emotions and experiences during the same event, lending to the fundamental differences between the characters. While Ruta Sepetys has done a great job on alternating POV in some of her other novels (such as Between Shades of Gray), Salt to the Sea however did not execute multiple POVs well. Ruta Sepetys kept her characters’ points of view to 3-4 pages each which did not contribute to the depth of characters or reader-character relationship development, both of which are crucial to successfully writing in multiple POVs. The story is remarkable, and I truly could not put it down. Although I found the execution of the multiple POVs to be unsuccessful, the overall narrative Ruta Sepetys was telling was through the point of view of the refugees and lost souls of this World War II tragedy. She beautifully executed the fear, wariness, hope, desperation, and hurt through these four principal characters, so while I felt I didn’t get to know them very well, I still heard them. I still hurt for them and those they portrayed. Ruta Sepetys succeeded in giving a voice to the lost voices of the Gustloff, which is exactly what Ruta Sepetys was writing for.

I gave Salt to the Sea 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.com I did enjoy the novel, it was a great story and the historical research provided at the end was marvelous, but the short “chapters” did not appeal to me. I felt that I did not get to know the characters at all, so when a pivotal moment occurred, I almost missed it because it almost felt like it was slapped into the story for dramatic effect however tragic the revelation was. Although I really, and clearly, did not love the way the book was executed, it did not take away from the impact of this important story. 

References and other Helpful Resources

EBSCOhost. (2015). Salt to the Sea. NoveList Plus. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=neh&tg=UI&an=10464544&site=novp-live

Goodreads. (n.d.). Salt to the Sea. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25614492-salt-to-the-sea?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=AyuylCXNxh&rank=1

Oklahoma Library Association. (n.d.). Sequoyah Book Awards. https://www.oklibs.org/page/01Sequoyah

Petrikowski, N.P. (2023, September 21). Wilhelm Gustloff. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/MV-Wilhelm-Gustloff

Selcer, R. (2022, January 9). “The worst maritime disaster ever”: the Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff. The Past. https://the-past.com/feature/the-worst-maritime-disaster-ever-the-sinking-of-the-wilhelm-gustloff/

Sepetys, R. (2016). Salt to the Sea. Philomel Books.

Tulsa City-County Library. (n.d.). Salt to the Sea. Catalog. https://tccl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S63C3283423