There are two voices in this complex and moving narrative, and on the surface they could not seem more different. One is the voice of a black musician, composer and writer who traces his own evolution and that of his seven brothers and sisters from a childhood in a Brooklyn housing project to accomplished maturity. The second voice is that of Rachel Shilsky, daughter of a failed itinerant Orthodox Jewish Rabbi in a... violently racist small town. The two stories, son's and mother's, beautifuly juxtaposed }New York Times Book Review{.