Best-selling author Ruta Sepetys interviewed by Ellen Cassedy

Ruta Sepetys’ novel “Between shades of Gray” tells the story of the Soviet deportations of 1941. More at www.betweenshadesofgray.com

June 14 marks the 70th anniversary of mass deportation of Lithuanians to Siberia. On this date in 1941, as Nazi Germany prepared to invade Lithuania, Soviet authorities loaded tens of thousands of people – men, women and children – into cattle cars and transported them into exile. Some were sentenced to death; some died under harsh conditions of forced labor; some survived. With Stalin’s death in 1953, the Siberian camps began to empty out. But it was many years before the stories of the exile were openly told.

Author Ruta Sepetys

A new novel, Between Shades of Gray (Philomel/Penguin), brings the story of the 1941 deportations into vivid focus.  It will be published in Lithuania under the name Tarp pilku debesu (Alma Littera), and in 23 other countries. 

VilNews correspondent Ellen Cassedy interviewed author Ruta Sepetys Washington, D.C.