Author was struck by story of mixed-race orphans behind 'Keeper of Lost Children'

Hey, it's Emperors Book of the Day, I'm Andrew Limbong.

You know, with all the books and movies and documentaries made about World War II and

its aftermath, you'd think that by now there'd be nothing new to explore.

And yet I'd never heard of Mabel Grammer until I listened to today's interview.

She was a journalist who went to Germany after the war and found all these mixed-risk children

in orphanages, children who were not being adopted because of their skin color.

The author Siddiqua Johnson also had never heard of Mabel Grammer until she went down

a random Google rabbit hole and discovered the subject of her new novel.

It's called The Keeper of Lost Children, a fictional story based on Grammer's life.

Here Mabel is the basis for her character Ethel Gathers.

This is Johnson's first historical fiction novel.

And she spoke to MPR's Emily Quang about the responsibility she felt working in the

genre.

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When writer Cedequa Johnson gets an idea for a story, the hairs stand on the back of her neck.

And that's exactly what happened when she learned about Germany's Mischlingskinder.

The thousands of biracial children with German mothers and Black American G.I.

fathers born during and after World War II.

Many of these children were abandoned to orphanages, until one woman decided to intervene and

find them homes.

And that history inspired Cedequa Johnson's new novel, The Keeper of Lost Children.

She joins me now.

Welcome to All Things Considered.

Thank you, Emily.

It's so great to be here.

What's striking about this novel is told from three vantage points by three characters.

Who are they?

And what are they each struggling with?

We have Ethel Gathers, who is inspired by the real-life maple grammar, who was a journalist,

who went over to Germany and she discovered these mixed-race orphans, a little-known

consequence of World War II in orphanages.

And she decided that something needed to be done.

And then we have Sophia, who is a young girl living on a farm.

Her story takes place in 1965.

And she's in a family that she feels just doesn't love her.

And she's offered this very rare opportunity to go to a boarding school on scholarship.

And when she gets there, she realizes she's one of the first African-American students

there.

And that comes with a host of issues for her.

And then we meet Asi Phillips.

He's a 19-year-old black American in South Philadelphia.

He really wants to go to college, but he can't afford it.

And so he volunteers for the U.S. Army as a way to elevate his life.

When he gets to Germany, he's there during the occupation.

And he realizes that freedom in Germany is something very different than the Jim Crow laws

that he experienced in America.

It is amazing.

You tackled all three of these characters.

Actually, when you list them out like that, they each could be their own book.

But they're in fact woven all together.

Yeah, they really could have been their own story.

I mean, there were certain times where I had to cut chapters because I was going a little

too far with Asi or I was going a little too far with Sophia.

And I had to remember the heart of the story is Ethel's story, which is inspired by this

amazing woman, Mabel Grammar, who, you know, is just a footnote in history.

I was really taken aback that she was someone who I didn't know about.

Yeah, tell us about Mabel T. Grammar.

How did you come across her?

So Mabel Grammar, I came across her by accident.

I was tucked away at a writing retreat working on my previous novel, The House of Eve.

And I popped into my Google search orphans, unwanted children, and up popped the story of

Mabel Grammar.

And she was an American journalist.

She married a chief warrant officer in the United States Army.

She went over to Mannheim, Germany with him.

He worked a lot and she didn't speak the language, so she felt isolated.

She also could not have children because of a childhood illness.

And she stumbled across a bunch of nuns who invited her to this orphanage.

And there she saw a gaggle of mixed-race children.

And she decided that something needed to be done.

And so she and her husband adopts 12 of these children themselves.

And she's responsible for moving over 500 into loving American homes.

And you had never heard of this person.

Never heard of her.

And those are the stories that really, as you mentioned, get the hairs on my arms standing

up because I see myself as the person who is supposed to go into these dark spaces of

history and bring back these women, these ambitious women who have been footnotes, who have

been marginalized, who have been erased, who have largely been forgotten.

Those are the stories that I like to write about.

Yeah.

There's those stories and then there's stories that haven't even been written down

in a way.

And it makes me think about you reveal at the end of the book that Ozzy, the service

member, he was inspired in part by a conversation you had with your great uncle Edgar at a family

reunion who served in the Air Force.

What did you learn from him?

Yeah.

When I was talking to my uncle, Edgar, you know, I had already knew that I wanted to write

this story.

And I realized that he had served around the time that Ozzy would serve in my novel.

And, you know, I really just picked his brain.

What was it like living in a foreign country where you had more freedom and you didn't

have that freedom here in America?

I have a question.

I haven't read your other books.

This is just randomly popped into my head.

Is this your first time writing from the historical perspective of a man?

It is the first time, which was really scary for me.

Ozzy was the character that I felt I needed to write because oftentimes the black man gets

left out of the story.

There are thousands of world, world two movies and books and you don't see them.

And I know that they were there because they're related to me and they're related to my

readers.

And so it was really important for me to hone in on who he was and paint him as a three-dimensional

characters, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

I think that was one of the most moving parts of the book for me was without giving too

much away when Ethel reflects on how she, the woman who, you know, helped these babies

find homes.

I hadn't considered the perspective of the servicemen who, for one reason or another,

lost touch with their children.

Yeah.

That was a powerful moment for me as well.

And that was one of the moments of the book that I sort of didn't see coming.

It touched me, probably as deeply as it touches the readers.

Yeah.

How do you see your responsibility different than that of a writer who is not writing historical

fiction?

Oh, I take it really seriously, especially now with everything sort of being erased

and monuments being taken down.

And I think that what I'm doing is sort of leaving a roadmap for the younger generations.

I always tell my kids, if we don't know where we came from, we have no idea of how to make

sense of the times that we're in now.

I see historical fiction as a way to make our American history a little bit more powerful

people.

You know, it's easier to swallow than a textbook.

And so I'm giving you all the facts, I'm giving you all the truths, but I'm sort of mixing

in the sugar affiction that makes it a little bit easier to swallow.

The sugar affiction.

Siddiqua Johnson, her new novel is Keeper of Lost Children.

It is out now.

Thank you for speaking with us.

Thank you so much for having me.

This was such a joy and a pleasure.

And just a reminder that signing up for Book of the Day Plus is a great way to support

Ampere's book coverage and public media.

And you'll get to listen to every episode sponsor free.

So please go find out more at plus dot npr dot org slash book of the day.

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