The Stories to Voice Collection
Audio Drama Podcasts Set in the Mid-20th Century
Stories to Voice audio dramas are inspirational stories about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people caught up in history. The podcasts let you hear what they saw and meet unforgettable people with whom you won’t want to part.
Audio drama based on the WWII diary written by Natalie Crouter during her internment in a Japanese prison camp in the Philippines from 1942 to 1945.
Forbidden Diary is a survival story of body and mind journaled by Natalie Crouter. Weeks after the first bombings of the Philippines, Japanese soldiers invaded Crouters’ town of Baguio on the island of Luzon. Within hours Natalie, her family, and 500 American and British civilians were force marched to a deserted U.S. military post. Thus began their years of imprisonment and struggle to stay alive.
Under the watchful eyes of Japanese guards, the prisoners set up their own society. They educated their children and elected camp representatives while constantly scrounging for food, often with help of heroic Filipinos who risked their lives. Each new camp commandant was harsher than the previous, except one. And it was with this remarkable Japanese officer that the prisoners found common ground. Natalie’s diary is a fascinating, real-life view of wartime captivity. It’s also a gripping tale of courage, tenacity, and hope. See also About Forbidden Diary.
A podcast series based on letters written by Kansas Sisters who served as midwives in Northern Nigeria during the late 1950s and 1960s.
Letters from Nigeria is based on actual letters written home by Dominican Sisters. The audio drama starts in 1956, when three Sisters travel to Northern Nigeria. Their mission is to help Dominican Fathers build a clinic in the predominantly Muslim area. When they arrive, Nigeria is preparing for Independence from the British, and Biafran War is yet to erupt.
You’ll hear their stories about the Sisters driving into the bush to dispense medicine, asking Hausa chieftains permission to deliver their wives’ babies, and juju medicine—a far cry from their sheltered lives in Kansas. The Sisters’ faith and farm-girl upbringing get them through hardships and help them gain respect from Nigerians of all faiths. See also About Letters from Nigeria.
A Sister Hildy Mystery
While learning how to deliver life at an Arizona midwifery school, Sister Hildy encounters a suspicious death next to Native American lands.
Birth of a Midwife is a fictitious spin off from the Letters from Nigeria audio drama about the clever Sister Hildy who is training to be a midwife on Native American lands and discovers a suspicious death. Was it the tragic result of the private war between two tribes fighting over land or premeditated murder?