I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys

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 Historical Fiction at its Best!

What a jaw-dropping book about a boy in Romania during one of the most oppressive communist regimes led by dictator Nicolae Ceausescu (Beloved Leader) and his wife Elena (Heroine Mother).

 

In Romania, people are kept under complete control:  where they live (tiny hovel-like apartments); where they work (twelve hours a day, six days a week); and how much food and electricity they get (very little).  Even in their own homes, people speak in whispers because they know they are bugged and any word against the government will result in severe punishment or death. This is a country where cigarettes are a form of currency used to bribe dentists for Novocain or vodka is used to get an x-ray at a doctor’s office.

 

The biggest wield of power Ceausescu holds over Romanians is isolation and FEAR.  He instills fear in everyone by having his own citizens become informants on each other.  NO one can be trusted, including your own family because you never know whom the notorious Securitate (Secret Police) has forced to become a spy.  Someone like seventeen-year-old Cristian Florescu, an unwilling informant in a brutal country on the cusp of a Revolution in 1989. 

 

A page-turning, must-read!

 

I love how author Ruta Sepetys brings these lesser known historical events to life in this book just as she did about the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff ship as people tried to flee East Prussia at the end of WWII in her book, Salt to the Sea.  And while her books are marketed for a young adult audience, they certainly cross over to adult historical fiction.  

 

I don’t usually like getting “stuck” on one author, but in Sepetys’s case, I’ll have to make an exception. After reading I Must Betray You, I jumped right into Fountains of Silence:  again excellent!

 

Fountains of Silence about the life in Spain under the brutal dictatorship of Francisco Franco in the 1950s.  


Now I really want to read her other books, too:

Between Shades of Grey about a Lithuanian girl who is sent to a labor camp during Stalin’s regime.

Out of the Easy about a young woman in New Orleans in the 1950s.

 

Annette

 

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