42. Keeper of Lost Children by Sadeqa Johnson

listened on Libby

464 pgs. (14+ hrs.)

2026
Adult Historical Fiction
Finished 8/24/226
Goodreads rating: 4.43
My rating: 4.75 - It got a little slow here and there.  Great story all told.
Setting: 1950 through 1968 in Philadelphia, Pa, Manheim, Germany, farm in southern Minnesota, fancy boarding school in perhaps VA...

My comments: Three characters are followed , two in the early 1950s and one starting in 1965, and they all come together at the end of the book, in 1966 with an epilogue in 1968.  All are black.  Two live through impossible, difficult situations because of the hatred that many whites of these periods had for people of color.  The civil rights movement.  black army soldiers in Germany pairing up with white German women and having mixed-race babies out of wedlock. And the story of the woman who discovered an orphanage in Manheim, Germany, loaded with these mixed babies.  She desperately wants kids, but that's not to be...until she decides to adopt and follow.

Goodreads synopsis: In this new novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The House of Eve, one American woman’s vision in post WWII Germany will tie together three people in an unexpected way.

Lost in the streets and smoldering rubble of Occupied Germany, Ethel Gathers, the proud wife of an American soldier spots a gaggle of mixed-race children following a nun. Desperate to conceive her own family, she feels compelled to follow them to learn their story.

Ozzie Philips volunteers for the army in 1948, eager to break barriers for Black soldiers. Despite his best efforts, he finds the racism he encountered at home in Philadelphia has followed him overseas. He finds solace in the arms of Jelka, a German woman struggling with the lack of resources and even joy in her destroyed country.

In 1965, Sophia Clark discovers she’s been given an opportunity to integrate a prestigious boarding school in Maryland and leave behind her spiteful parents and the grueling demands. In a chance meeting with a fellow classmate, she discovers a secret that upends her world.

Toggling between the lives of these three individuals, Keeper of Lost Children explores how one woman’s vision will change the course of countless lives, and demonstrates that love in its myriad of forms—familial, parental, and forbidden, even love of self—can be transcendent.