Seeker of Lost Stories

WARNING! ATENCION! ATTENTION! ACHTUNG! Fangirl here.

I’m a huge fan of historical fiction, and historical YA is a fave subgenre of mine. I mean, Orphan Train (Christina Baker Kline), The Home for Unwanted Girls (Joanna Goodman), Outrun the Moon (Stacey Lee), All The Light We Cannot See (Anthony Doerr), I could go on. But my legit favorite--as in I-cannot-wait-for-her-next-book-and-wish-she'd-write-faster-already!--is anything written by Ruta Sepetys.

They say that history is written by the victors. But Ruta seems to have made it her life's goal to ensure that those whom the victors endeavored to conquer are not silenced. I love that Ruta's tagline is "seeker of lost stories." She's not claiming to be the creator or the architect or even the writer of these stories. She's the seeker, the person devoted to finding these stories and helping their owners tell them.

I also love that the setting of Ruta’s stories are in diverse locations and time periods throughout history. They're not focused on sensationalized eras or overdone historic events or the (highly overrated, IMO) Regency Era. They’re about Josie Moraine (Out of the Easy), who was raised in a brothel because her mother was a prostitute in 1950s New Orleans. They feature Lina Vilkas (Between Shades of Gray) who was only fifteen when the NKVD invaded her home in 1941 Lithuania, before deporting them to Siberia and then the North Pole. And they give a voice to characters, like Ana and Daniel--a Spanish maid and an American photographer--who meet during Franco’s Spain 1957 (The Fountains of Silence).

I love all Ruta books, but The Fountains of Silence has been my favorite so far. Not only does the backdrop of Franco’s Spain provide a compelling and sparsely-discussed setting, the multiple character POVs (which are more than just Ana’s and Daniel’s, BTW) provide depth to the various cultural and historical issues burgeoning during this time. And of course, the budding romance between Ana and Daniel keeps us hooked, tearing through the pages!

To be completely transparent, I listened to this book in Spanish, and this may have added extra color and authenticity. The Spanish narrator on Audible was excellent. But I'm certain the English version is just as gorgeous. That said, I am a Ruta fan in any language and am anxiously awaiting her new book, which per Twitter, is set in…[drumroll]…Romania!!!