Soviet NKVD agents pound on the Vilkas family's door at night and order them to pack and leave within twenty minutes.

Elena bribes an NKVD officer with her amber pendant and Kostas's engraved pocket watch to prevent Jonas from being taken away.

Lina, Jonas, and Andrius sneak out at night and find Lina's battered father peering through a toilet hole in a men's train car.

The train's doors are locked shut and it begins moving toward Siberia, leaving the platform strewn with abandoned luggage and food.

Prisoners learn that Germany has invaded Lithuania; Ona's baby dies the same day from an inability to breastfeed.

After six weeks of travel, prisoners disembark in the Altai region and nearly get sold off in groups to local buyers.

The commander shoots Ona in the head with his pistol after she attacks him in a grief-stricken rage.

Elena is summoned by the commander and refuses his demand to spy on other prisoners in exchange for better treatment.

Commander Komorov forces the women into a pit they dug themselves, then fires his pistol into it while laughing uncontrollably.

Lina steals a file from the commander's desk and Andrius reads enough to confirm her father is imprisoned in Krasnoyarsk Prison.

Jonas collapses from scurvy; Andrius arrives with a stolen can of tomatoes that helps pull Jonas back from death.

The Vilkas family is loaded onto trucks heading north; Andrius slips the quartz stone into Lina's pocket as she departs.

The prisoners arrive at Trofimovsk near the North Pole and are stranded on an uninhabited frozen shore without any shelter.

Ivanov mimes a gunshot to break the news of Kostas's death; Kretzsky confirms that Lina's father was shot in Krasnoyarsk Prison.

Elena dies of cold, starvation, and grief; Lina and Jonas build a coffin and bury her on a hill overlooking the sea.

Lina Vilkas is arrested by Soviet NKVD agents in the middle of the night and, along with her mother Elena and brother Jonas, is forced onto a train headed to Siberia. On the journey she briefly locates her father in a separate men's train car before the train moves on, eventually depositing the prisoners at a brutal beet farming collective in the Altai region. There the prisoners endure sadistic treatment from their overseers, and Lina steals a file from the commander's desk to confirm her father is imprisoned in Krasnoyarsk Prison. Jonas nearly dies of scurvy before the family is moved further north to Trofimovsk, a camp near the North Pole with no shelter and almost no food. At the Arctic camp Lina learns her father has been executed, and her mother slowly dies of cold, starvation, and grief, leaving Lina and Jonas to bury her on a frozen hillside overlooking the sea.

The headline events driving Lina's deportation, imprisonment, and devastating loss.

Elena smashes the family's crystal and china to keep their prized possessions out of Soviet hands before leaving home.

The NKVD truck stops at a hospital to arrest Ona and her newborn, pulling Ona from the delivery room still bleeding.

Lina meets seventeen-year-old Andrius Arvydas in the livestock train car; his mother told the NKVD he was feeble-minded so they could stay together.

Elena manages to buy candy and cigarettes for all the prisoners at a countryside kiosk during a rare stop on the train.

Prisoners are given communal showers; a guard grabs Lina's breast before Elena yells at him and pulls Lina away.

Lina follows Elena and spots Mrs. Arvydas inside an NKVD building, looking well-fed and serving beverages to Soviet officers.

A prisoner is found executed and pinned to a wall after the NKVD intercepts his letter to Lithuanian freedom fighters.

The grouchy woman signs the Soviet document admitting criminality and begins carrying the other prisoners' letters to the nearby town of Turaciak.

Kretzsky escorts Lina from the beet fields to draw a map and copy a portrait in exchange for two cigarettes.

On Lina's sixteenth birthday, Andrius gives her a Dickens novel in Russian to replace the one they ruined; she kisses him.

Andrius warns Lina that her family is on a list to be moved to another camp farther north.

Lina gives Andrius all of her drawings to keep safe before the family is forced onto the trucks leaving Altai.

An American ship arrives at Trofimovsk; the NKVD hides all prisoners and forces them to carry the ship's provisions inside for the guards.

The bald man reveals that Lina's father helped his brother's family escape Lithuania to Germany, which caused the Vilkas family's deportation.

A doctor arrives at the camp and tells Lina that Nikolai Kretzsky sent him; Jonas and Janina begin to recover.

From the moment Elena smashes her crystal to keep it from Soviet hands, the prisoners' journey is defined by both brutality and quiet defiance. Lina meets Andrius on the crowded train and the group endures the horror of Ona being arrested just hours after giving birth, then spending weeks unable to feed her baby. Across months in the Altai labor camp, small acts of resistance — Elena buying treats at a kiosk, a grouchy woman carrying letters to the village — are set against public executions and midnight interrogations. Lina kisses Andrius on her sixteenth birthday before being torn away when her family is moved north to Trofimovsk, where an American ship delivers provisions the NKVD keeps entirely for themselves. The story resolves when a doctor arrives at the Arctic camp, revealing that Kretzsky sent him, and Jonas and Janina begin their slow recovery.

Significant moments of cruelty, survival, and human connection across the full journey.

An NKVD officer strikes Elena with his rifle, but she stays calm and quietly protects the valuables sewn into her coat's lining.

Lina realizes she is still wearing her nightgown as the prisoners are herded onto the waiting truck in the darkened street.

The bald man jumps from the moving truck and breaks his leg; guards throw him back into the truck, still injured.

A man in the truck identifies Elena as the wife of Kostas Vilkas, and another man says darkly that Kostas is already gone.

Lina finds a beaten Andrius hiding under the train car and helps others pull him inside through the toilet hole.

Lina realizes she can draw a hidden coded map of their route and family details on her handkerchief to guide her father to them.

Lina freezes in horror after seeing a child's body thrown in the mud; Andrius takes the food pails and pushes her back inside.

After three days of decomposition, Miss Grybas snatches Ona's dead baby from her arms and lowers it through the toilet hole.

Lina accuses Andrius of spying for the Soviets; he angrily reveals his mother is being forced to sleep with NKVD officers to keep them alive.

Lina and Andrius reconcile at Jonas's bedside; Andrius sees her drawings for the first time, including a portrait she drew of him.

NKVD guards burst into the Christmas celebration and drag the prisoners away; Kretzsky lingers and stares at the family photographs.

Lina forces herself to draw a flattering portrait of Commander Komorov, suppressing her urge to draw snakes sprouting from his neck.

Kretzsky orders Lina and Jonas to wait at the kitchen door, then pelts them with food and garbage, giving them more provisions than they have had in weeks.

Lina finds a drunken Kretzsky after Elena's death and feels compassion for him as he weeps and talks about his own dead mother.

The sun begins its return after months of polar night; Lina spots a sliver of gold on the horizon and reaches for the stone.

Lina's moral development begins on the night of her arrest, when Elena's cool courage in protecting her hidden valuables and a neighbor's ominous words about her father reveal the stakes the family faces. On the train, rescuing the beaten Andrius from under the car and devising a coded handkerchief map show Lina's growing resourcefulness, while witnessing a child's corpse thrown in the mud shatters her remaining innocence. The bitter confrontation with Andrius over his mother's forced arrangement forces Lina to reckon with her own judgment, and drawing a flattering portrait of the monstrous commander tests her artistic integrity against the will to survive. After Elena's death, Lina's encounter with a drunken and broken Kretzsky becomes the novel's moral turning point, as she chooses compassion over the hatred she believes she is entitled to feel. The story closes as the sun returns after months of polar darkness, offering Lina a thin but real sliver of hope.

The key decisions, discoveries, and moral shifts that define Lina's coming-of-age.

Ruta Sepetys

Novel

Fiction

Guide