THEN SINGS MY SOUL

Listeners travel from 1904 Chudniv, Ukraine, to 1994 South Haven, Michigan, through narrator Natasha Soudek's honeyed voice. Jakob lives a long life, having survived horrific pogroms at age 5, along with his 14-year-old brother, Peter. They escape to America, where he continued his family's craft of carving jewels and stones. When his daughter, Nel, a jewelry designer, comes home after her mother dies, she begins to learn of her father's life and what he endured. Soudek uses gravelly Slavic accents for Jakob's early life and his recitations of Hebrew, contrasting with soft, unaccented tones for Nel and the narrative. Soudek ably shifts her performance between the two timelines as they reveal the songs buried within the family's story. M.B.K. © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2019]