Sepetys, R. (2016). Salt to the sea.
NY: Philomel Books.
Salt to the Sea takes place in January 1945, during the final days of WWII. The Russian forces are gaining ground both to the west and the east, and so German civilians are evacuating, fleeing violence, and running towards the Baltic Sea where the German navy will transport them to safety.
The story is told from four points of
view: Joana is a Lithuanian refugee who was allowed to resettle in
Germany; Emilia is a pregnant teenager who escaped the genocide that
wiped out many of her fellow Poles and is trying to remain off the radar of
roving German soldiers; Florian is a former art restorer from Prussia
who is smuggling a priceless statue he has stolen from the Nazis as revenge
after they killed his father; Alfred is a delusional Nazi soldier
working on the Wilhelm Gustloff..
Emilia meets Florian in a potato cellar,
where he saves her from a Soviet soldier’s attempted assault. Emilia becomes
attached to Florian, whom she sees as her “knight,” and begins to follow him on
his journey out of East Prussia. That evening, the two hide out in a barn,
where they meet Joana and her fellow travelers—Klaus, Eva, Ingrid, and a man
called “the Shoe Poet.” Although the other refugees distrust Florian,
Joana is a nurse and feels obligated to help him. She removes shrapnel from a
wound on his side and stitches the site closed. In the morning, Florian slips
out, and Emilia follows him.
The next day, Florian and Emilia accidentally
run into Joana again when they all decide to spend the night in the same
abandoned Prussian mansion. Although Florian’s wound has begun to heal, Emilia
is now clearly sick. Joana examines her and realizes that, although only
fifteen, she’s almost nine months pregnant. Joana worries the pregnancy is the
result of rape, but Emilia assures her that the father of her child is a man
named August, whom she loves and is on her way to meet.
The two groups decide to travel together.
They walk for another day until they reach the coast, at which point they must
cut across a frozen bay. As they begin to cross the water, Soviet planes shoot
through the ice and Ingrid, who had been the first to cross, falls into the
water and drowns. Shocked by the death of their friend, the group nonetheless
makes it across the bay, where they encounter a German soldier. Florian has
altered his identification papers to make it look as though he is on a personal
mission for Erich Koch, and so the soldier offers to take him by boat
wherever he needs to go. Joana and the rest of the refugees convince Florian to
let them tag along, and so the group is transported to the city of Götenhafen,
a port town where they will be able to board a ship and, they hope, sail to
freedom.
In Götenhafen, the group meets Alfred,
who is working on the Wilhelm Gustloff. Everyone but Eva manages to get a
boarding pass for the same ship—Joana by trading her expertise as a nurse for
safe passage, Florian by forging his. Joana begins to work in the maternity
ward. There, she cares for Emilia, who gives birth to a baby daughter, Halinka.
As she goes into labor, Emilia reveals that Halinka is not August’s child, but
the result of rape at the hands of Soviet soldiers. Initially unable to face
the prospect of motherhood, Emilia eventually warms to her daughter with the
encouragement of her friends and fellow travelers.
Two days after boarding the ship, it
finally sets sail. That same day, however, Allied torpedoes pierce the hull and
cause the Wilhelm Gustloff to begin to sink. Joana, Klaus,
Florian and Halinka make it onto the deck and onto a lifeboat. Emilia asks
Florian to carry her baby into the lifeboat. Meanwhile, Florian asks Alfred to
briefly hold his pack (which contains a priceless stolen artifact, the Amber
Swan, but then the lifeboat is lowered into the water, and Emilia is separated
from her child, and Florian from his belongings.
Joana and Florian are eventually rescued
by a boat that comes to save the drowning and freezing refugees, but Emilia and
Alfred, although they manage to board a raft, remain adrift at sea. Alfred, who
has been scripting letters to his beloved Hannelore for much of the
novel, reveals that Hannelore was Jewish, and that he turned her into the Nazis
when she spurned him. Overcome by rage, delirium, and hypothermia, Alfred first
confuses Emilia for Hannelore, and then lashes out when he realizes she is
speaking Polish and therefore belongs to a group Hitler has deemed
“undesirable.” As he advances on her, Alfred falls into the water and dies.
Emilia also freezes to death on the raft, but the final chapter implies that
she is reunited with her family and friends in the afterlife.
In a final letter that serves as an
afterword, a woman named Clara Christensen writes to Florian about
how, twenty years earlier, she found Emilia’s body washed up on the shore by
her home. She explains how she buried Emilia, and hopes she is at peace. She
adds that she also buried Florian’s backpack, along with the Amber Swan, and
hopes that he is at peace as well.
The theme of family shows up to the entire
novel, as all families, regardless of nationality, were critically affected by
the war. Given the vast number of children who were orphaned or displaced, and
the number of babies born as a result of rape, traditional family structure was
fragmented, and individuals were forced to create new family units—or reject
family and intimacy altogether. This is the dilemma for the characters in Salt
to the Sea. All have lost family, in one way or another, and together they must
figure out how to repair old wounds and create kinship with strangers.
Shoes are mentioned often in the story. Heinz
is an old German shoemaker who insists that “The shoes always tell the story.”
He is called the "shoe poet" because he contends that it is possible
to glean everything you need to know about a person from their shoes. Thus,
shoes become a symbol not just for the true character or hidden secrets of
others, but also for the trust that different characters put into their own ideas
and methods for determining the value of others.
This book would be a good novel to study in
an upper high school social studies or English class. I did not find any good free resources, but
Teachers Pay Teachers has several different choices.
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Browse/Search:salt%20to%20the%20sea
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