What We Hide

Spanning more than four centuries-from the Union of Lublin in 1569 to modern-day Vilnius-What We Hide traces one Lithuanian family's struggle to preserve identity, memory, and home through war, occupation, and renewal. It begins with Jurgis Alekna, a proud noble watching his country absorbed into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and Mykolas Daukantas, a servant born in bondage who learns that knowledge itself can be rebellion. Across generations, their descendants carry fragments of a hidden ledger, a chest of letters, and a family's unbroken will. Through wars, partitions, and Soviet rule, the Daukantas line endures-their voices shifting from whispered prayers beneath the hearth to forbidden lessons in barn schools, from deportations to Siberia to the fragile rediscovery of freedom in 1990. In 2025, Mindaugas Daukantas, an engineer reclaiming his ancestral home, opens that same chest and uncovers the stories that shaped his bloodline and his country. Blending lyrical prose with historical precision, C.S. Scott weaves a sweeping narrative of faith, silence, and survival-a portrait of a nation that refused to forget itself. What We Hide is both a family saga and a love letter to Lithuania-where memory is resistance, and every generation must choose what to remember.