The book “Salt to the Sea” written by Ruta Sepetys is written from four perspectives, three refugees named Joana, Florian and Emilia and an arrogant German soldier named Alfred. Joana, a twenty one year old woman from Lithuania, begins in a group consisting of an orphaned six-year-old boy, Ingrid a blind girl and two others. Emilia, a fifteen year old Polish girl hides in an abandoned cellar where Florian saves her from a Russian soldier. On January 1945, during the fall of the Third Reich the Soviets are approaching thousands of refugees escaping by sea to board the Wilhelm Gustloff. As the stories of our main protagonists converge they all reach their common goal of reaching the ship. Until it is attacked by Russian missiles and is destroyed. I enjoyed the multiple perspectives of the book and I loved how it portrayed the situation the refugees were in. I believe that some readers can be confused by the different perspectives of each character indicated by the large bolded names at the beginning of each chapter. In conclusion, the peril and uncertainty of this era was greatly portrayed by the different characters of different backgrounds being affected together by the same event.
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