Best-Selling Author Visits Montclair Bookstore

A standing-room crowd of 50, including many Lithuanian- and Latvian-Americans, listened to a book chat Saturday evening by author Ruta Sepetys at in Montclair.

The author described how her research of a forgotten piece of history — the deportation of families from the Baltic republics to Stalin’s work camps in Siberia — led to the novel, Between Shades of Gray. “The Baltic peoples,” she said, “learned how to speak when your voice has been extinguished.”

The book is targeted to young adults. In Chicago Friday as part of a book tour, Sepetys said an eighth-grader had told her the story would make a great video game.

Sepetys is the daughter of a refugee who fled repression in Lithuania to settle in Detroit.