Salt to the Sea is a young-adult historical fiction novel published on February 2, 2016. It is Ruta Sepetys’s third novel. Like Sepetys’s other three novels, Salt to the Sea explores the lost and forgotten stories of history. In particular, it focuses on the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff during Operational Hannibal, which took place during WWII and was the largest sea evacuation in modern history. During Operation Hannibal, over two million Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, ethnic Germans, and residents of the East Prussian and Polish corridors were evacuated. The majority of the Gustloff’s passengers were civilians, with an estimated five thousand being children.
While there are many...
