Jack Cavanaugh: 20 books

Win one for The Gipper. Has there ever been a better-known and widely-used exhortative phrase in sports? Not likely. But who was the “Gipper,” this mythical-like sports figure whose nickname has aroused, in turn, awe, wonderment, curiosity, and amusement since the second decade of the twentieth...

Heisman Trophy winners Glenn Davis and Felix Blanchard—renowned during their playing days at West Point as “Mr. Inside and Mr. Outside”—were the best-known college football players in the country between 1944 and 1946, and Army was the nation’s top-ranked team under legendary coach Red Blaik....

From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, when basketball’s Boston Celtics were piecing together a run for the ages, when Montreal’s Canadiens were in the midst of notching a record-setting five streaight Stanley Cups, and when the New York Yankees were the once-and-future kings of the diamond, one...

Book 1 of the Songs in the Night trilogy. 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...

Big league baseball would seem to have been a hard sell in 1942. World War II was not going well for the United States in the Pacific and not much better in Europe. Moreover, the country was in drastically short supply of ships, planes, submarines, torpedoes, and other war materials, and Uncle Sam...

A novel set in the days of Samson -Of all the tribes of Israel, only one fails to seize the land apportioned to them by God at Shiloh. When key families of the tribe of Dan abandon their promised land and migrate north, Eri ben Helek remains behind, pledging to lead his tribe and claim God’s...

Book 3, American Family Portrait series. As the winds of revolution agitate the colonies, forcing them to declare their allegiance, the Morgans find themselves split on the issue. Twin brothers. Both patriots. Equally passionate. One faithful to England; the other to America. Will the forces that pit brother against brother doom the Morgan heritage, or save it?

A Short StoryArrested for the brutal murders of nine coeds, he says he’s the creator of the world and wants the arresting detective to help him prove it. A nutcase. Or is he? There’s something about him that just doesn’t add up . . . .

Book 5, American Family Portrait series. In an age of sweatshops and oppressive factory conditions, tenement dwellers cling to dreams of better days. One such dreamer is Jesse Morgan. But when a real-life act of heroism goes terribly wrong, Jesse flees New York’s east side for the pioneering West,...

Book 4, American Family Portrait series. Emotions erupt between the Morgan and Cooper families when the Morgan boys run slaves during a reunion with their Southern friends. As national tensions escalate, the boys from both families march to war on opposite sides of the conflict, only to find themselves under attack by a common enemy with a blood feud.

Book 6, American Family Portrait series. World War I comes suddenly to the Morgans when Katy and her mother survive the sinking of the luxury liner Lusitania, torpedoed by a German U-boat. Her brother Johnny distinguishes himself as an aviator, attached to a elite French squadron. In a series of ill-fated events, both find themselves behind enemy lines.

When Drew Morgan is dispatched to the English village of Edenford to unmask a notorious pamphleteer, instead of a lair of sedition and heresy, he finds sincere, hardworking people trying to live by their biblical beliefs. He learns the truth about them, but is it too late? With Bishop Laud’s forces...

Book 8, American Family Portrait series. Set against the turbulent backdrop of the volatile 60’s, the Morgan household erupts when Paige protests the military draft and her brother’s imminent departure for Vietnam. Disillusioned by the agendas of the protest leaders, when her brother returns from...

Book 2, American Family Portrait series. Their family ripped apart by a powerful and ruthless merchant, Benjamin Morgan’s three children must battle enemies among the Narragansett Indians, ruthless Boston merchants, and pirates on the high seas. Their survival depends on developing an indomitable spirit, the kind that would come to characterize a fledgling nation.