His Watchful Eye by Jack Cavanaugh

His Watchful Eye by Jack Cavanaugh - 384 pages

In the second book of Cavanaugh's Songs in the Night Trilogy, the familiar cast returns and it is nearly three years after the first book.  Josef and Mady Schumacher, Lisette, and the children have established a safe house northwest of Berlin.  Here they raise the children and assist with underground operations.  Konrad Reichmann and his friend, Neff, find themselves on the Russian front as a sniper team.  Ernst Ehrenberg is now a theoretical scientist working on the rocket program, including on the V-2.  Everyone's life re-converges during Christmas, 1943, at the Schumacher cabin.  After Neff's death, Konrad deserted.  His new plan is to find ways to make the Nazi's he once revered suffer.  However, after a death in their close-knit group, he becomes the "shepherd" to those at the cabin.  In this role, he undertakes a mission to locate a scientist code-named "Peregrine" to deliver him to the Americans in exchange for a noble cause (I can't say more without spoiling the ending).

Of the two book I have read in the trilogy thus far, I think the first is the stronger book.  While I liked following the story of the next stage of the characters' lives, it was like having three separate stories in one novel that briefly connected near the beginning and converged at the end.