Sepetys' first novel offers a harrowing and horrifying account of the forcible relocation of countless Lithuanians in the wake
of the Russian invasion of their country in 1939. In the case of 16-year-old Lina, her mother, and her younger brother, this
means deportation to a forced-labor camp in Siberia, where conditions are all too painfully similar to those of Nazi
concentration camps. Lina's great hope is that somehow her father, who has already been arrested by the Soviet secret
police, might find and rescue them. A gifted artist, she begins secretly creating pictures that can--she hopes--be
surreptitiously sent to him in his own prison camp. Whether or not this will be possible, it is her art