While Mortals Sleep

BOOK 1: THE COMING WAR

Enter the world of Nazi Germany. The story begins with a soul-searching pastor who sees the youth of his church abandoning everything they’ve been taught, swayed by Hitler’s youth movement. Some pastors have preached against Hitler, only to be arrested and shipped to labor camps. It’s one thing to speak up if it means his own personal suffering, but to take a stand against the Nazis now will endanger not only him, but his wife and unborn child.

But when Hitler begins testing gas chambers using the disabled infants of his own country, and when the pastor’s newborn daughter is taken from him for having a hearing defect, the dye is cast. Pastor Josef Schumacher can no longer stand idly by. He undertakes a daring rescue mission on a gassing facility in Hadamar and enters the underground world of resistance to the Third Reich. This thrilling story of faith and courage is based on true events.

From Library Journal

In 1939, Pastor Josef Schumacher’s native Germany has become a nightmare of Nazi activism spreading its poisonous grip throughout his congregation and infecting the bright teenagers he has watched grow up. When one of his teens turns in his own father for listening to BBC broadcasts, an action that results in the man’s execution, Josef can no longer remain uninvolved. Even though his pregnant wife begs him not to call attention to himself, Josef is drawn deeper into the resistance, risking his life daily. Cavanaugh (“An American Family Portrait” series) examines the lives of ordinary Germans who did not stand by while their countrymen began the wholesale slaughter of Jews. His portrayal of the impact of one man’s work on the lives of others fits well on the shelf with Laurel Schunk’s A Clear North Light (LJ 4/1/01). Highly recommended.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

While Mortals Sleep begins a new series, Songs of the Night, from the reliable Cavanaugh. It’s about Reverend Josef Schumacher, who saw his father dragged away by the Nazi brownshirts, and who, in 1939, has begun to rebel by training his own small youth corps to follow God rather than Hitler. He issues each of his charges a special coin with a personalized Bible verse. Soon all are drawn into full-scale resistance, with Josef’s timid wife, Mady, at last coming on board at great risk to herself. Portraying Nazis as evil hardly breaks new ground, and Cavanaugh’s effort lacks the heart-wrenching quality of James Yoder’s Black Spider over Tiegenhoff (1995). Even so, Cavanaugh is a smooth stylist, and his series is bound to circulate. John Mort
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