Keeper of Lost Children

My grandfather’s brother, Uncle Edgar, served in the military during the Double V campaign. At ninety-one years old, he does not discuss his time in service very much, but I’ve always wondered what it was like for him and other Black men to join the recently desegregated armed forces. I wondered about the soldiers, believing themselves to be liberated from the crushing blow of American racism, arriving in Germany to find so many German women ready to love them. That’s when I discovered Germany’s shameful treatment of the so-called Mischlingskinder, the children sired by German white women and their Black American lovers. And I learned about the heroic efforts of Mabel Grammer to find these children homes with Black American families. I could not stop thinking about those children, and what happened to them once they arrived in America. Did they live happily ever after? Or did they feel displaced in their new environment?

Beautiful Children is a triangular story about three people from opposite worlds, and the heart-wrenching secret that was left behind. The novel explores themes of identity, desegregation, alcoholism, the blush of young, forbidden love, and the power of forgiveness and familial reunion.