Garden of Life

By: Shalom Kolontarov

Narrated by: RJ Bayley

In a small village, there lives an old man who has invested everything he has - money, time, and heart - into cultivating his garden. But while the plants flourish, the old man's landlord has his sights set on something else entirely.

When the landlord demands the old man hand over the garden so he can begin construction on his new pond-side cottage, the old man knows he can't refuse. The gold the landlord offers could change his life. But where would he go, and how can he give up his beloved garden?

In the end, it will be a fight no one saw coming.

©2017 Shalom Kolontarov (P)2017 Shalom Kolontarov

Audible Version Shines

English Audible version made my day. Dialogue development is cunning in style but might feel a bit quirky to those not familiar with Slavic dialect traditions. The description "loose character" is verbally hurled quite often as a derogatory term I had never experienced. That phraseology alone was very much worthy of many dialect excursions on the verbal menu of well-developed characters. As a 3rd generation American descendant of Slavs (Polish origins) who was not properly schooled in the old language purposefully (although I heard much Polish dialogue from a very young age, and a smidgen of Czech and Russian) I greatly enjoyed the many dialect nuances. The author's efforts are much appreciated in this regard. To learn is to love, and there is much to love in this reading excursion.