WWII Maritime Disaster


The first thing is, this is a young adult book. It has short chapters and sentences, and the descriptions of the horror of the experience are not graphic. As does any children's book, it has hope. In fact, it is suffused with hope even though it describes the movement of a group of refuges moving through the interior of Prussia in an attempted escape from the Russians on the Wilhelm Gustloff during its fateful sinking. The book is told from the first-person perspective of four characters: a young nurse, an equally young art restorer, a Polish girl, and a German sailor. Chapters move from character to character, giving different perspectives on the same event as well as propelling the story along. Each of these four main characters truly comes to life, but so do many of the minor characters with whom they interact.

The book is well constructed and does what the author intends, which is to send the reader to researching more about this maritime disaster. In today's world, it raises the question of how much "news" are we not hearing about as we ponder why the death of roughly 9,000 German civilians, half of them children, hasn't made it into our mainstream knowledge of WWII events. In the research I did after finishing the book, I stumbled upon Gunter Grass' last book, "Crabwalk," which places the event in a pivotal role in various German generations' understanding of the war. I am looking forward to reading that and hoping for a more eloquent approach. Although Sepetys wrote a young adult book and can't be faulted for an appropriate literary approach appealing to early adolescents, I can't find it in myself to give five stars to such a simplistic writing style.

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