A poet­ic and unusu­al­ly con­struct­ed mem­oir, The Sound of Her Voice is Sara Gel­bard’s sto­ry of being born into one of the first kib­butz­im in Israel, at a time when the kib­butz phi­los­o­phy was at its most strin­gent regard­ing chil­dren and their par­ents. These par­ents had just left the Holo­caust and had their own heart­break. Sara lived in a Chil­dren’s House with twen­ty-three oth­er chil­dren, and only saw her par­ents inter­mit­tent­ly. Chil­dren were meant to be lit­tle sol­diers and, for a sen­si­tive and cre­ative child, this was a painful, self-alien­at­ing expe­ri­ence. Still, Sara excels in her life in the Israeli army, and as a teacher in Israel. Her inde­pen­dence of mind has her final­ly reject­ed by her kib­butz and, ulti­mate­ly she choos­es to leave. Sprin­kled with haikus, this book sen­si­tive­ly fol­lows her per­son­al jour­ney through life from Israel to New York and Uruguay, and gives voice to how she final­ly cre­at­ed a home for her­self and in her heart, and healed what she lost, par­tial­ly through the gift of writing.