Jack Cavanaugh Reviews

Page Two

Added November 30, 2005

Dear Enemy

Author: Jack Cavanaugh
Publisher: Bethany House Publishers
Available At: Bookstores Everywhere
Publishing Date: August 2005
Genre: Fiction: Historical/Christian
Format: Trade Paperback
Price: $12.99
ISBN: 0764223100
Reviewer: Phillip Tomasso III

Historical suspense novels first intrigued me when I read Jack Cavanaugh's, While Mortals Sleep. That intrigue only increased when I completed reading his book His Watchful Eye. My intrigue eventually bordered on obsession after reading Above All Earthly Powers. So when I found that Cavanaugh had written a fourth, Dear Enemy, I was ecstatic. Am I shamelessly plugging this author's works? You bet I am. Cavanaugh's take on World War II is different from most other books (fiction) I have read. As an American it is always easiest to think of the Germans of that time as nothing more than Nazis, hateful, heartless, murderous Nazis. Cavanaugh's writing is more sympathetic and eye opening. It was this way with the first three books I mentioned (all part of the Songs in the Night Series) and it was this way with Dear Enemy. Here, let me explain...

Annie is an American nurse stationed in Belgium during World War II. It is Christmastime and she has just recently married Army Lieutenant, Keith Mitchell. Their honeymoon plans to Paris are placed on hold as the war closes in on them. Rumor has it that the enemy is pushing through the Ardennes Forest, not far from where Annie's medical facility is based. The decision comes down to move away from enemy lines. However, many of the wounded soldiers within the makeshift hospital are not fit for travel. Annie and her best friend, Mouse, another nurse, decide to stay behind.

Things go from bad to worse when Lieutenant Mitchell and a hotdog general race into the forest but do not return. Though everything is against their success since the winter in Belgium is cold and harsh, and the fact that German soldiers are noted for their vile mistreatment of female prisoners, Annie and Mouse venture out on an unauthorized rescue mission.

The situation goes from bad to worse. German soldiers are within the forest. After a gunfight the unthinkable has happened. A German soldier captures Annie. What he intends to do with her is not certain. As they brave the elements, something between their situation, captor and prisoner, ensures that Annie's life can never be the same. Annie knows she wants to survive. Getting out of the woods and back to her military unit are very important to her, but at what costs?

Reviews are often hard to write. As a reviewer, when I enjoy a book, I want the reader to know every detail the author used to make the novel memorable. To do this would be to ruin the story. I do not want to ruin a story for a potential reader. I want to give enough so that my enthusiasm becomes contagious. With all of Jack Cavanaugh's books, I have the fever. He writes clearly and concisely. His books contain facts, but the facts are not weighty and distracting. The chapters are tight and taut. The characters are vivid. A story of love, friendship, and survival, Dear Enemy is emotional, sentimental and engrossing.

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Added July 22, 2004

Songs in the Night Book 3: Above All Earthly Powers

Author: Jack Cavanaugh
Publisher: Bethany House
Available At: Bookstores Everywhere
Publishing Date: May 2004
Genre: Fiction: Historical/Christian/Thriller
Format: Trade Paperback
Price: $12.99
ISBN: 0-7642-2309-7
Reviewer: Phillip Tomasso III

It is no wonder that Jack Cavanaugh is a Christy Award-winning novelist. Above All Earthly Powers is the latest in the Songs In The Night Series. (The first two were While Mortals Sleep and His Watchful Eye). These Christian, historical thrillers break the mold. They are not one-dimensional as many critics of Christian literature assume. Cavanaugh packs his work with enough suspense and tension to rival best sellers who I've noticed tend to produce cookie-cut out fiction. Cavanaugh's raw talent is refreshing, insightful and inspiring.

To recap, in While Mortals Sleep, we met Pastor Josef Schumacher. As a God-fearing Christian, he risked everything-his wife, their unborn child and his own life-to stand up to Hitler and The Third Reich for his beliefs. Many teens from his church were destined to join the German military ranks under Hitler's rule. Pastor Schumacher hoped to instill his passion for faith and God into Hitler's Youth.

In His Watchful Eye, three years have gone by. The pastor is sick, dying, and the youth he ministered are all grown up. They have fled to the mountains and established a refuge camp known as Ramah Cabin-a sanctuary for the children rescued. One of the most rebellious pupils, Konrad Reichmann, is an expert sniper. However he realizes the truth about the war efforts and knows something must change. Hiding from the Germans and the Russians, things go from bad to worse. Supplies run short, and there are perhaps worse enemies than the enclosing German, Russian and American soldiers. They need to escape Germany, but how? Who do they trust?

The third book takes place nearly twenty years later. It opens August, 1961. World War II is over. A foreboding wall imprisons the German citizens. Anyone caught attempting to scurry over the wall is shot and killed, or arrested and disappears. Though some of the main characters from His Watchful Eye successfully made it to America, most are still trapped behind the wall.

The children of Ramah Cabin have been collected and placed in a hospital facility under the care of Otto Witzell. Mady Schumacher-Pastor Josef Schumacher's widowed wife-spent years looking for the misfit and disadvantaged children. Once she learns of their whereabouts a need to rescue them becomes imminently obvious. Together she, Konrad and Witzell devise a plan to get the "kids"-though they have grown up-together again and to establish a new Ramah Cabin.

A life-long goal of Colonel Matthew "Park" Parker, an American troop, is to bring his German friends of the Ramah Cabin to America, to deliver them from Germany to Freedom House in America. He knows that things went wrong in initial the attempt made twenty years ago, but has not stopped trying to devise a plan to help bring Mady and her "children" home to his country.

Once Park develops his idea, an elaborate and risky plan to deceive the border patrol, he is immediately faced with overcoming three major hurtles: one, conveying the idea to Mady in Germany; two, convincing her that he was not responsible for the failed escape that occurred twenty years ago; and three, successfully executing a plan that could cost all of them their very freedom, or worse...their lives.

As if the escape plan was not complicated enough, Konrad Reichmann's brother Willi, re-enters the picture. He is wealthy and feared because of his connection with the Stasi secret police. Since he was a boy, Willi, has harbored an unhealthy attraction toward the now-widowed Mady Schumacher. With her husband, Josef, out of the way, nothing stands between his pursuits to win her heart-even if it means taking it against her will. His continuous and unplanned visits to the cabin threaten to destroy the escape plan before it even has a chance to be tested. Time becomes extremely important as Willi begins to suspect something is going on at the cabin. If he breathes a word of suspicion to the Stasi-they will all be arrested.

Filled with harrowing escape attempts, unveiled love and nearly four-hundred pages of anxiety and anticipation, Above All Earthly Powers, perhaps wraps up an epic trilogy that started when Pastor Josef Schumacher's passion and love for God was passed on to those he loved-despite a country that stood against the core of his very beliefs. Cavanaugh's writing is quick and to the point. His chapters are fluff-less and engaging. His characters are well defined and real. I will anxiously await his next work.

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