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. I appreciate stories that shed light on that era, even more so when I’m learning something new from them. But, only at times, the different excerpts of the interviews that was written through out did confuse me a little bit of what the connection was. 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 Choir members all came from different social, ethnic and political backgrounds, but they were all united in their desire to save human beings from the Nazis.

With beautiful prose and vivid imagery, author Joseph O' Connor has done a superb job of transporting the reader to Nazi-occupied Rome. Vatican City was a neutral zone that housed a huge variety of people coming into the city for protection and a place to find that their life might go on.He heavily suspects O'Flaherty of being the mastermind, but his efforts to trap him keep falling flat. Other details pertaining to the mission and the participants can be gathered from written statements, pages from an unpublished memoir and interview transcripts of the choir members twenty years after the events (1962-63)which are interspersed throughout the narrative. This is a well conceived novel which has a group of individuals led by Monsignor Hugh O’Flaherty to find sanctuary and safety for escaped prisoners of war.

The novel is told as a countdown to the Rendimento (whose literal meaning is performance) a daring mission which is to take place on Christmas Eve 1943. He was on to the Monsignor and had compiled a dossier on him but so far had not been able to charge him with anything. My father's house' is set in wartime Rome, occupied by the Nazis and lead by Gestapo commander Paul Hauptmann, who takes a hands on approach to his work. Thank you NetGalley and Dreamscape Media for accepting my request to audibly read and review My Father's House. This highly imaginative and informative novel is full of suspense and tension whilst celebrating the qualities of humanity, compassion, love, faith, tenacity and the resilience of those willing to risk their lives to save those at risk in the city of Rome during WW2.

Beautifully crafted, his razor-sharp dialogue is to be savoured, and he employs dark humour to great effect. I’d never heard of ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel of the Vatican’ before and was curious as to how he hid and protected so many from the Nazis.

Hauptmann was the Gestapo Officer who had appointed Hugh as the Vatican Envoy thinking that an Irishman would be unlikely to sympathize with English prisoners. His home is Vatican City, the world’s smallest state, a neutral, independent country within Rome where the occupiers hold no sway. The premise of this story set my heart racing and I just couldn't wait to get struck in but unfortunately, I just couldn't connect with the writing style and while I got about 3/4 ways through the book, I felt I was struggling and not getting my head around the story.The book alternates between that time period and twenty years later as those who aided in the escapes are interviewed by PBS. However, he is soon prevented from carrying out his duties by a Vatican fearful of the Nazis threat of occupying their city, although for Hugh, neutrality is an extremist stance, without which no tyranny can flourish. The novel provides wonderful background on each character and follows each of them through the action. To say I was disappointed in their reticence was an understatement, but Mr O'Connor made me understand the why of that. I've enjoyed Joseph O'Connors work whenever I've read it over the years, starting all the way back with 'Cowboy and Indians’ and 'Desparadoes' back in the early nineties.