FLIGHT

In this debut memoir, Gustaitis recalls her family’s flight from Eastern Europe during World War II and her father’s disappearance.

The author, a former reporter for the Washington Post, writes that she enjoyed a “peaceful and comfortable childhood” in Kaunas, Lithuania, until the fateful day in 1940 when she learned that Russian forces had invaded her country. Her father, Antanas, was a brigadier general and chief of the Lithuanian air force; he devised a plan for the family to escape to Argentina via Poland and Germany, but when they left the country, he stayed behind, planning to rejoin them later. The author fled with her mother, Bronislava, and never saw her father again. Before this, the author says, she was “oblivious” to the war’s impact on her part of the world, but no longer; although they briefly escaped to Germany, they soon returned to Lithuania to try to find Antanas, to no avail. They lived under Nazi occupation there for nearly four years and then had to leave again when Russian forces returned at the war’s conclusion. She longed for a return to what her mother called “The Time Before”—an aching desire that Gustaitis depicts in heartbreaking, poignant terms: “Of course, I thought, the war would soon end. Then the Russians would leave our country; Lithuania would again be free. And then my father would return...he would find his way back, and so would we.” Decades later, once the Soviet Union crumbled, the author returned to Lithuania to learn the tragic fate of her father at the hands of the Soviet secret police. This is a rare book, written by a gifted author: a thoughtful and rigorous rendering of history and a deeply candid recollection of survival against formidable odds. Over the course of this work, Gustaitis conveys, in affecting, elegiac language, not only the plight of her own family, but of an entire country in turmoil. In addition, the work serves as a beautiful homage to the author’s mother, who repeatedly proved to be both “resourceful and brave” throughout their journeys.

An extraordinary mix of wartime history and personal remembrance.