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

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Review of "Star of the Sea" ". Mostlyfiction.com. Archived from the original on 12 March 2010 . Retrieved 4 May 2010.

An Irish priest, Hugh O'Flaherty, dedicates himself to helping those escaping from the Nazis. His home is Vatican City, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. He gathers a team to set up an Escape Line.

My Father's House

This was an 11+hour novel on a well-done audio! Although parts could have gone on longer, IMHO, other parts seemed to need a bit of editing or shortening. Regardless, it was quite interesting and compelling due to the author's writing and treatment of the subject matter (WWII, Holocaust), which includes an IRL Irish Monsignor stationed in Rome who helped Jews and other escapees flee the Nazis. Each chapter was read by one of the narrators listed above and we see the setting and atrocities through their eyes. Breathtakingly good writing - O'Connor puts you right there, centre stage in the story and never lets you go Peter James Rome’s Galleria Borghese and, in the same city, the excavations beneath St Peter’s. Also, Sun Studio, Memphis. Superb craftsmanship. 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.”

It was a dangerous game they played with Hauptmann, one where their own lives would have been extinguished if found they housed and kept Jews safe. The danger and peril was ever so real and the author does an excellent job of showing the reader that with scenes that set one's heart beating faster. This was a game played out against the Nazi oppressor and through The Monsignor and his band of loyal friends, they managed to save thousands of Jews and Allied trapped soldiers. They were brilliant but everything they did came under the intense scrutiny of Paul Hauptman who knew something was happening but couldn't quite catch them all. Some he did and they lost their lives but no one ever turned over the names of the group. The Vatican City, at one fifth of a square mile the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome, acted as a safe haven for diplomats, refugees, and escaped Allied prisoners. Such a small area had it's limit of how many people could be hidden so with the help of brave individuals from all walks of life, clothes, food, medicine, papers, and money were gathered continually to allow thousands to flee to refuge in the countryside surrounding Rome and then on to safer havens. Everyday the people working with Hugh were risking their lives, just as he risked his own life everyday.I’ve been going to Listowel Writers’ Week since before I was published,” he recalls, with obvious affection. “And late one night in the bar of the Listowel Arms somebody told me the story of as Hugh O’Flaherty from Kerry who had been a priest in the Vatican and the risks that he took to save all of these people.” Chapters tell the story about what happened in 1943, but the details are told through the various points-of-view of members of the choir twenty years later. This allows them to also to share their personal reflections about what happened. My Father's House is the first book in a new trilogy. This first book in the Rome Escape Line trilogy is inspired by the true story of Monsignor O’Flaherty, an Irish priest in the Vatican who helped smuggle Jews and escaped Allied prisoners out of Italy.