Sadeqa Johnson (Photo by PC Rhodes Photo)
Richmond-based author Sadeqa Johnson didn’t set out to tell the story of Mabel Grammer, but upon learning about the adoption advocate and civil rights activist, she was inspired to create her next work of historical fiction.
Scheduled for a Feb. 10 release, “Keeper of Lost Children” follows the journeys of three fictional Black Americans as they navigate life in the mid-1900s. Ozzie Philips joins the Army in 1948, just as it becomes desegregated. Ethel Gathers is a military wife who lives overseas in Germany in the 1950s. Sophia Clark is selected to attend a prestigious all-white boarding school in Maryland in 1965. While the book hops between the three timelines, each is part of a larger narrative drawing on the life of Grammer.
Born in Arkansas, Grammer was a journalist and Army wife who discovered the plight of German mothers who had mixed-race children, the result of World War II relationships with Black American soldiers stationed abroad. The children faced stigma and discrimination, labeled with the derogatory term “mischlingskinder” (mixed children”) and often abandoned after their fathers were sent back to the U.S. It’s approximated that nearly 5,000 biracial children with American lineage were placed in German orphanages between 1945 and 1955. To help them, Grammer established a private adoption agency to place the children in stable Black homes; she and her husband even adopted 12 kids. Johnson discovered Grammer’s story while conducting research for her New York Times bestselling book, “The House of Eve,” which was published in 2023.
“I was looking up orphanages, I was looking up maternity homes for ‘The House of Eve,’ and this movie popped up called ‘Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story,’” Johnson says. “That’s where I learned about Mabel Grammer and these mixed-race children living in the orphanages, and I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh,’ I could feel the hairs on my arms stand up. I was like, ‘Wow, who? How come people don’t know about this woman? How come people don’t know this story?’ I thought, ‘Oh, this is where I need to go next.’”
Johnson pored over video accounts, books and periodicals, research that included many trips to the Library of Virginia, to accurately flesh out her characters. “That was what I did to study, to figure out what it was like to be a ‘brown baby,’ what it was like to be a Black man in the military and what it was like for these women,” she says.
She hopes readers come away from the book informed about Grammer, with a better understanding of history and its cyclical nature, and inspired to discover or explore their own identities.
“My big thing is the determination and the ambition of Black women and how we’ve always been a part of the narrative,” Johnson says. “We’ve always been there in the backdrop making things happen, and we often get left out of the story. And that was why it was really important for me to bring Mabel Grammer to the forefront.”
A full-time author, Johnson also teaches at writers’ conferences and retreats, and travels the country as a public speaker. Learn more about the award-winning novelist at sadeqa.net.
Fountain Bookstore is hosting a launch event for “Keeper of Lost Children” at Grace Baptist Church (4200 Dover Road) at 7 p.m. on Feb. 9. Tickets are $35.
