Ruta Sepetys (r.) was awarded Lithuania's Cross of the Knight of the Order by the president of Lithuania in a ceremony last weekend at the Presidential Palace in Vilnius. Sepetys is pictured here with Agnė Dvarionienė (l.), publicist from her Lithuanian publisher, Alma Littera, holding the Lithuanian edition of the book.
The honor was bestowed on Sepetys in recognition for her novel Between Shades of Gray (Philomel/Penguin) and "her continued global work sharing the little-known history of Stalin's ethnic cleansing in the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia." Between Shades of Gray has been published in 43 countries and 26 languages.