There is no shortage of books describing the horrors of war, which makes this novel of World War II refugees so remarkable for its riveting description of refugees seeking escape from vengeful Russians overtaking Germany. Sepetys follows the plight of a young Lithuanian nurse, a 15-year old Polish girl, a six-year-old German boy, an old German shoemaker, a blind German girl, a woman who is an annoying German battle-axe, and a young German man with shrapnel in his side, a mysterious knapsack, and civilian clothes, when he should have been conscripted. With Russian soldier hot on their heels, seeking revenge for German atrocities, the main characters flee through woods, on back roads, and along throughways crowded with thousands of additional refugees heading for ports on the Baltic Sea.
The cleverness of the book, in addition to its unnerving suspense, is to bring lives and backgrounds of a few real people caught up in a war not of their making. As readers we feel sympathy for the Pole and the blind girl, because if they are caught by Nazis they face execution for being inferior to the master race. But we also feel bad for Germans who are neither in favor of Nazism or warfare in general.
It is a major feat to engender sympathy for Germans in World War II. It is also a very difficult book to read with the plight of so many Gazan refugees hanging in the balance. Warfare is a horrible way to make policy.
