My Father's House: AS SEEN ON BBC BETWEEN THE COVERS (The Rome Escape Line, 1)

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All the while the members of the choir are working on the plans for forthcoming missions they are mindful of the risks they are running. The glimpses of his human side are shocking, alongside his brutal behaviour and casual violence, while you feel his obsession with O’Flaherty and the mind games he uses against him, highlight O’Flaherty’s essential strength. I loved the way the author includes passages made up of short, sharp bursts of descriptive prose that are almost like poetry. Certainly would make a great movie, and it becomes natural to draw comparisons with Oscar Schindler. Finally – and triumphantly – My Father’s House is an intimate drama that illuminates both the fragility and the wonder of unlikely human connections forged in adversity and, in some cases, enduring for a lifetime.

A small band of unlikely friends led by this courageous Irish priest is drawn into deadly danger as they seek to help those seeking refuge and escape. I particularly like the way the author chooses to tell his tale via the countdown in 1943, which is interspersed with BBC Interviews of the choir members recorded in 1962 to 63 and some transcripts.Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for accepting my request to audibly read and review My Father's House. Diplomats, refugees, and escaped Allied prisoners flee for protection into Vatican City, at one fifth of a square mile the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome. This is my first time reading this author and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future. In 2009 he was the Harman Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at Baruch College, the City University of New York.

The book is based on the true story of Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty who, along with others, risked his life to smuggle thousands of Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy. Their cover is a choir and the choristers are Delia Kieran, wife to the senior Irish diplomat at the Vatican, Marianna de Vries, a Dutch, freelance journalist, Sir D’Arcy Osborne, the British ambassador, Enzo Angelucci, former new stand owner, Sam Derry, an escaped British prisoner of war, John May is the resourceful man servant to the ambassador, Contessa Giovanna Landini, a widow, and the “conductor” is Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty. There are a number of heroic locals committed to making the Nazi’s malignant presence as difficult as possible. It details raw courage and the selfish acts of all those who worked with Hugh to raise funds and find accommodation for the growing number of escapees.I have watched this film so many times and of all the WW2 stories this one breaks my heart each time. A few years prior to the events of 1943, as an official Vatican visitor, O’Flaherty had been assigned to visit an Italian concentration camp for British PoWs. This novel revolves around Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty, based in Rome during WWII and the organiser of an escape route for prisoners of war.