And My Soul Will Be Healed

<p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Opera: a lavish form of musical entertainment that for over 400 years has been seen by different observers as intimidating lofty ridiculous mysterious glamorous gripping boring and otherworldly. It is also the most gender-fluid of the arts featuring (in its earliest days) male singers who had been castrated as boys to preserve their high voices and continuing to the present when women still don trousers to portray men on stage.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>To Jeremy Blatz it is a fascinating distraction from an unfulfilled life marred by the frustrations of an unrewarding job as a second-string music critic and a marriage that seems to be dissolving before his eyes. But it is not until his sleep is routinely interrupted by asthma attacks that he finally seeks treatment from a hypnotherapist who to Jeremy's delight also has connections to the backstage world of the local opera company.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>But what begins as an intriguing artistic exploration becomes a sinister obsession as Jeremy witnesses a series of acclaimed sopranos suffer bizarrely grotesque deaths after their association with the opera world's greatest male sex-symbol the Egyptian-American bass/baritone Ramzi Matthews. It is through the intercession of his hypnotherapist that Jeremy becomes friends with Ramzi even as his own hypnosis sessions become infused with shocking trance-induced visions of Satanic rituals sexual abuse and human sacrifice-all colored by the residual religious guilt that engulfs Jeremy from his childhood Catholic upbringing.</span></p><p><span style=background-color: rgba(255 255 255 1); color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Jeremy eventually becomes determined to save his favorite singer a uniquely gifted soprano named Vanessa Williams-who coincidentally is also undergoing hypnosis treatments from the same therapist-from meeting a similarly morbid fate by using his investigative skills to unravel the intricately woven threads of her less fortunate colleagues' lives. The shocking truth he ultimately uncovers changes his life forever.</span></p>